For Teaching

Daniel 4: What the Passage Says

156 claims across 37 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Daniel 4 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

King Nebuchadnezzar sends out a public letter telling what happened to him. He describes a dream of a huge tree that is chopped down to a stump, with a heavenly watcher ordering that the man it stands for live like an animal until seven times pass over him; Daniel explains that the tree is the king. A year later the king boasts about Babylon, is driven away from people and eats grass like an ox, and then his reason returns, he praises the Most High, and his kingdom is given back to him.

Claim by Claim

4:1
- Nebuchadnezzar the king is the sender of this message.
- The message is addressed to all peoples, nations, and language groups dwelling in all the earth.
- Nebuchadnezzar wishes that peace be multiplied to them.
4:2
- Nebuchadnezzar thought it good to declare signs and wonders.
- The Most High God performed those signs and wonders toward him.
4:3
- God's signs are great.
- God's wonders are mighty.
- God's kingdom is an everlasting kingdom.
- God's dominion continues from generation to generation.
4:4
- Nebuchadnezzar was at ease in his house.
- Nebuchadnezzar was flourishing in his palace.
4:5
- Nebuchadnezzar saw a dream.
- The dream made him afraid.
- Thoughts on his bed and the visions of his head troubled him.
4:6
- Nebuchadnezzar issued a decree that all the wise men of Babylon be brought before him.
- The purpose was that they make known to him the interpretation of the dream.
4:7
- The magicians, the enchanters, the Chaldeans, and the diviners came in.
- Nebuchadnezzar told the dream before them.
- They did not make known its interpretation to him.
4:8
- At last Daniel came in before Nebuchadnezzar.
- Daniel's name is Belteshazzar, given after the name of Nebuchadnezzar's god.
- The spirit of the holy gods is in Daniel.
- Whether 'the holy gods' means several gods or a single holy God is not resolved by the wording.
- Nebuchadnezzar told the dream before Daniel.
4:9
- Nebuchadnezzar addressed Belteshazzar as chief of the magicians.
- Nebuchadnezzar said he knew that the spirit of the holy gods is in Belteshazzar.
- Nebuchadnezzar said no secret is too difficult for Belteshazzar.
- Nebuchadnezzar asked him to tell the visions of the dream he had seen.
- Nebuchadnezzar asked him to tell the interpretation of the dream.
4:10
- These were the visions of Nebuchadnezzar's head while on his bed.
- He saw a tree in the middle of the earth.
- The height of the tree was great.
4:11
- The tree grew and became strong.
- Its height reached to heaven.
- It was visible to the end of all the earth.
4:12
- The tree's leaves were beautiful.
- Its fruit was abundant.
- In it was food for all.
- The beasts of the field had shade under it.
- The birds of the sky dwelt in its branches.
- All flesh was fed from it.
4:13
- Nebuchadnezzar saw further in the visions of his head upon his bed.
- A watcher, a holy one, came down from heaven.
4:14
- The watcher called out loudly.
- He commanded that the tree be cut down.
- He commanded that its branches be cut off.
- He commanded that its leaves be stripped off.
- He commanded that its fruit be scattered.
- He commanded that the beasts flee from under it.
- He commanded that the birds flee from its branches.
4:15
- The watcher commanded that the stump with its roots be left in the earth.
- The stump is to have a band of iron and bronze on it.
- The stump is in the tender grass of the field.
- He is to be drenched with the dew of heaven.
- His portion is to be with the beasts in the grass of the earth.
4:16
- His heart is to be changed from that of a man.
- The heart of a beast is to be given to him.
- Seven times are to pass over him.
- The length of one of these 'times' is not stated.
4:17
- The matter is by the decree of the watchers.
- The sentence is by the word of the holy ones.
- The purpose is that the living may know that the Most High rules over the kingdom of men.
- The Most High gives that kingdom to whomever he wills.
- The Most High sets over it the lowliest of men.
4:18
- King Nebuchadnezzar saw this dream.
- Nebuchadnezzar commanded Belteshazzar to declare the interpretation.
- All the wise men of Nebuchadnezzar's kingdom are unable to make known the interpretation to him.
- Belteshazzar is able to make it known.
- The reason he is able is that the spirit of the holy gods is in him.
4:19
- Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar, was appalled for a time.
- His thoughts troubled him.
- The king told Belteshazzar not to let the dream or its interpretation trouble him.
- Belteshazzar answered, calling the king 'my lord'.
- Belteshazzar wished the dream were for those who hate the king.
- Belteshazzar wished the interpretation were for the king's enemies.
4:20
- The tree the king saw grew and became strong.
- Its height reached to heaven.
- It was visible to all the earth.
4:21
- The tree's leaves were beautiful.
- Its fruit was abundant.
- In it was food for all.
- The beasts of the field dwelt under it.
- The birds of the sky lived in its branches.
4:22
- The tree is the king himself.
- The king has grown and become strong.
- The king's greatness has grown and reaches to heaven.
- The king's dominion reaches to the end of the earth.
4:23
- The king saw a watcher, a holy one, coming down from heaven.
- The watcher said to cut down the tree and destroy it.
- The watcher said to leave the stump with its roots in the earth.
- The stump is to have a band of iron and bronze on it.
- The stump is in the tender grass of the field.
- He is to be drenched with the dew of heaven.
- His portion is to be with the beasts of the field.
- This lasts until seven times pass over him.
4:24
- This is the interpretation, addressed to the king.
- This is the decree of the Most High.
- The decree has come upon the king, Daniel's lord.
4:25
- The king will be driven away from men.
- The king's dwelling will be with the beasts of the field.
- The king will be made to eat grass like oxen.
- The king will be drenched with the dew of heaven.
- Seven times will pass over the king.
- This lasts until the king knows that the Most High rules over the kingdom of men.
- The Most High gives that kingdom to whomever he wills.
4:26
- The command was given to leave the stump with the tree's roots.
- The king's kingdom will be secured to him.
- This happens after the king comes to know that Heaven rules.
4:27
- Daniel asks that his counsel be acceptable to the king.
- Daniel tells the king to break off his sins by righteousness.
- Daniel tells the king to break off his iniquities by showing mercy to the poor.
- Perhaps there may then be a lengthening of the king's tranquillity.
4:28
- All of this came upon King Nebuchadnezzar.
4:29
- Twelve months later Nebuchadnezzar was walking upon the royal palace of Babylon.
4:30
- The king spoke.
- The king asked whether this was not great Babylon.
- The king said he himself had built it.
- He said he built it by the might of his power.
- He said he built it as a royal residence and for the honor of his majesty.
4:31
- The word was still in the king's mouth.
- A voice fell from heaven.
- The voice addressed King Nebuchadnezzar.
- The voice said the word was spoken to him.
- The voice said the kingdom had departed from him.
4:32
- The king will be driven away from men.
- The king's dwelling will be with the beasts of the field.
- The king will be made to eat grass like oxen.
- Seven times will pass over the king.
- This lasts until the king knows that the Most High rules over the kingdom of men.
- The Most High gives that kingdom to whomever he wills.
4:33
- The thing was fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar that same hour.
- He was driven away from men.
- He ate grass like oxen.
- His body was drenched with the dew of heaven.
- His hair grew long like eagles' feathers.
- His nails grew like birds' claws.
4:34
- At the end of the days Nebuchadnezzar lifted his eyes to heaven.
- His understanding returned to him.
- He blessed the Most High.
- He praised and honored the one who lives forever.
- God's dominion is an everlasting dominion.
- God's kingdom continues from generation to generation.
4:35
- All the inhabitants of the earth are reckoned as nothing.
- God does according to his will among the army of heaven.
- God does according to his will among the inhabitants of the earth.
- No one can stop his hand.
- No one can say to him, 'What are you doing?'
4:36
- At that time Nebuchadnezzar's reason returned to him.
- His honor and splendor returned to him for the glory of his kingdom.
- His counsellors and his lords sought him out.
- He was established in his kingdom.
- Surpassing greatness was added to him.
4:37
- Nebuchadnezzar praises, exalts, and honors the King of heaven.
- All God's works are truth.
- God's ways are just.
- God is able to humble those who walk in pride.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

4:1: The chapter is written as a royal proclamation, an open letter from Nebuchadnezzar to his whole empire, with the king speaking in the first person from verse 1 to verse 37 (apart from verses 28-33, where the account switches to third person). "Peace be multiplied unto you" is the standard opening formula of an Aramaic official letter, roughly "warmest greetings." In Hebrew and Aramaic Bibles these first three verses are numbered as the last three verses of chapter 3, so a Jewish edition will label them 3:31-33.
4:2: Nebuchadnezzar ruled Babylon from 605 to 562 BC and was the king who captured Jerusalem. "The high God" in the King James is an old rendering of the title "the Most High God", a name for God used in the Bible chiefly by foreigners speaking about the God of Israel.
4:3: The King James word "dominion" means the land and people a ruler controls.
4:5: Long ago, people believed some dreams carried important messages. That is why a scary dream worried a king so much.
4:6: The "wise men" of Babylon were paid royal advisers. Part of their job was explaining dreams and strange signs to the king.
4:7: These are four named groups of specialists at the Babylonian court, each with its own craft: reciters of spells, users of charms, readers of the stars, and men who determined the future by set techniques. The King James "Chaldeans" is misleading in English: besides being the name of a people, the word had become a technical term for this class of astrologer-priests, which is why it appears in a list of professions.
4:8: Captives taken into royal service were commonly given new names in the language of their captors. "Belteshazzar" is Babylonian and probably contains the name of the god Bel (Marduk), the chief god of Babylon, which is what "the name of my god" refers to. The Aramaic behind "the spirit of the holy gods" is genuinely ambiguous and can equally be read "the spirit of the holy God"; a pagan king would naturally mean the plural, and translators have gone both ways.
4:10: A giant tree standing at the center of the world, sheltering animals and feeding everyone, was a familiar image across the ancient Near East for a king and his empire. Assyrian and Babylonian rulers were praised in exactly these terms. A listener in Babylon would have recognized the picture as being about a kingdom before anyone explained it.
4:12: In 1611 English "meat" meant food of any kind, not flesh, and "fowls of the heaven" meant birds of the sky. A great tree sheltering animals and birds was a standard image in the ancient Near East for a king or empire under whose protection many peoples live.
4:13: "Watcher" translates the Aramaic word *ir*, literally "wakeful one" or "one who stays awake", a heavenly being, here paired with "a holy one" as two descriptions of the same figure. The term appears nowhere else in the Bible but is common in Jewish writings of the following centuries.
4:15: What the band of iron and bronze is for is not stated and has long been debated: it may be a hoop to protect or preserve the cut stump, or restraints on the man the stump stands for. "Dew of heaven" means simply the dew of the open sky, the point is that he is outdoors, unsheltered, all night.
4:16: "Heart" in Hebrew and Aramaic means the mind and the seat of thinking and will, not the emotions; the change described is to his reason, not his feelings. "Seven times" translates a word (*iddan*) meaning an appointed period of unspecified length. Most ancient and modern readers take it as seven years, but the text does not say so.
4:17: "The basest of men" in the King James does not mean the most wicked; "base" then meant low in rank. The sense is that the Most High can hand a kingdom even to the humblest and least important of people.
4:19: "Astonied" is an older form of "astonished," here in the strong sense of stunned or dumbfounded. "For one hour" translates an Aramaic phrase meaning a short while, the ancient world had no clock hour of sixty minutes in this sense. Daniel's wish that the dream belonged to the king's enemies is a courtier's formula for softening bad news, not a curse.
4:23: Dew is tiny drops of water. It forms on the grass during the night.
4:25: "They shall drive thee" uses an impersonal plural with no named agents, the effect in Aramaic is a passive, "you will be driven away," without saying by whom.
4:26: "The heavens do rule" is the earliest surviving example of a habit that later became widespread in Jewish speech: using "Heaven" as a respectful substitute for the name of God, to avoid saying it directly.
4:27: Two phrases here are disputed. The verb rendered "break off" can also mean redeem or buy off, and the word rendered "righteousness" came in later Aramaic and Hebrew to mean specifically almsgiving, so the line has been read either as "break with your sins by doing right" or as "buy off your sins by giving to the poor." "Iniquities" simply means wrongdoing, and "tranquillity" means a settled, prosperous state of affairs.
4:28: From here the chapter stops saying "I" and says "he" instead. It goes back to "I" in verse 34. The king is telling his own story, but the hardest part is told from the outside.
4:29: The King James "walked in the palace" reflects an Aramaic phrase meaning he was on the palace: that is, on the flat roof, from which the whole city could be surveyed.
4:30: Nebuchadnezzar rebuilt Babylon on an enormous scale, and his own surviving inscriptions boast of it in language close to this verse; bricks stamped with his name have been dug out of the city's walls, temples and processional gate.
4:33: The description is of behavior, not of a diagnosis: living outdoors, feeding on grass, hair and nails left untended and grown wild. No Babylonian record of such an episode survives, though a text found among the Dead Sea Scrolls tells a similar story about a later Babylonian king, Nabonidus.
4:34: To bless God in the Bible does not mean to do him good; it means to praise him and speak well of him. "Mine understanding returned unto me" means his sanity came back.
4:35: "The army of heaven" (usually "host of heaven") can mean either the stars or the heavenly beings who serve God; the two senses overlap in ancient usage and the phrase is not narrowed here. "Stay his hand" means stop or restrain him.
4:36: "My reason returned" means his mind was restored. "Brightness" here is the visible dignity and splendor expected of a king, the impression he made in public. Advisers and nobles "seeking unto" him means they came back looking for his rulings, which is how a court signals that a king is genuinely back in power.
4:37: "Judgment" in the King James commonly means justice, the sense is that all his ways are just. "Abase" means to bring low or humble.

Read Daniel 4