The Interpretation

It's been a few weeks since my last study
of Daniel
. I've been spending my quiet time either napping or studying something else offline because I hadn't yet unraveled the mystery of Nebuchadnezzar's dream to my satisfaction. I've read several interpretations of the dream and reached a conclusion I'm comfortable with.

First, the introduction for Daniel is given in Daniel 2:25-30
:

25Then Arioch brought in Daniel before the king in haste and said thus to him: ¿I have found among the exiles from Judah a man who will make known to the king the interpretation.¿ 26The king said to Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar, ¿Are you able to make known to me the dream that I have seen and its interpretation?¿ 27Daniel answered the king and said, ¿No wise men, enchanters, magicians, or astrologers can show to the king the mystery that the king has asked, 28but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and he has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days. Your dream and the visions of your head as you lay in bed are these: 29To you, O king, as you lay in bed came thoughts of what would be after this, and he who reveals mysteries made known to you what is to be. 30But as for me, this mystery has been revealed to me, not because of any wisdom that I have more than all the living, but in order that the interpretation may be made known to the king, and that you may know the thoughts of your mind.

Daniel is brought in and announced and immediately the King wants to know if Daniel can give both the dream and the interpretation. Daniel responds first by telling the King that he has asked for the impossible and that no man can do what he's asked. However, God "reveals mysteries" and has allowed Daniel to know the contents of the King's dream. Daniel explains that this dream is special in that it comes directly from God and that it reveals what will happen in "latter days," the future. Daniel finally makes it clear that he is not in himself special. God chose to reveal the meaning through him, but not because of any particular virtue he held within himself.

Daniel is amazingly humble in all this. He's not willing to take any glory and seems almost reluctant to reveal the meaning of the dream on the risk that the King will see the interpretation as coming from Daniel rather than from God Himself. As far as Nebuchadnezzar himself would have been concerned, the God of Israel was just one of many gods. Daniel would appear to him to be a messenger sent by this God to him. For Daniel, there is only one God and all other gods are merely the idols made by human hands with no more power than the metal or wood they were formed from.

Now the dream, I'm going to give the full scripture of Daniel 2:31-45
and then explain the passage:

31¿You saw, O king, and behold, a great image. This image, mighty and of exceeding brightness, stood before you, and its appearance was frightening. 32The head of this image was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its middle and thighs of bronze, 33its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. 34As you looked, a stone was cut out by no human hand, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. 35Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold, all together were broken in pieces, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.

36¿This was the dream. Now we will tell the king its interpretation. 37You, O king, the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, and the might, and the glory, 38and into whose hand he has given, wherever they dwell, the children of man, the beasts of the field, and the birds of the heavens, making you rule over them all¿you are the head of gold. 39Another kingdom inferior to you shall arise after you, and yet a third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all the earth. 40And there shall be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron, because iron breaks to pieces and shatters all things. And like iron that crushes, it shall break and crush all these. 41And as you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter¿s clay and partly of iron, it shall be a divided kingdom, but some of the firmness of iron shall be in it, just as you saw iron mixed with the soft clay. 42And as the toes of the feet were partly iron and partly clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly brittle. 43As you saw the iron mixed with soft clay, so they will mix with one another in marriage, but they will not hold together, just as iron does not mix with clay. 44And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever, 45just as you saw that a stone was cut from a mountain by no human hand, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold. A great God has made known to the king what shall be after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation sure.¿

First, Daniel just explains the dream. He follows this with the interpretation. I've found the dream to be very easy to understand at first, but it becomes less and less easy to follow as it goes on.

Nebuchadnezzar saw, in his dream, a huge and shining statue in his dream. The size of it is frightening. It's construction is made of costlier materials at the top and as we move down the worth of those materials decreases. At the same time, the strength of those materials also increases, until the feet. As the dream progressed a massive stone was "cut out by no human hands," which indicates that God cuts this stone. The stone is cast at the statue and utterly destroys it. The remains are blown away in the wind and the mountain then filled the whole earth.

I'm a bit reminded of the images of the Twin Towers falling on September 11, 2001. As the buildings fell, the steel, concrete, and glass that made up the structure was pulverized to dust and the cloud hung over Manhattan for days. When this great stone strikes this statue, it grinds the statue to dust and nothing is left that may be salvaged. It blows a way like "chaff," or the dead grass left after the kernels of grain have been removed. Of course, the great difference between these two events is the one is a stone cut and cast by God while the towers were struck down by terrorists.

Daniel then explains that the head of gold is Nebuchadnezzar himself. As noted by Dr. Renald Showers in his book, The Most High God, A Commentary on the Book of Daniel (© 1982 Friends of Israel Ministries, Inc.), a King was considered as synonymous with his kingdom during this time and in this region. Therefore, the gold head also represents the kingdom of Babylon. Showers also comments that the chief god of Bablon was Marduk, the god of gold. Gold was also used extensively in Babylonian architecture and was overlaid on buildings, walls, and idols.

Daniel explains that the silver, the bronze, and the iron are later kingdoms that shall rise up after Babylon. These later kingdoms are almost universally understood to be, respectively, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome. Medo-Persia is represented by silver because silver was a synonym for money in ancient times and Medo-Persia established an extensive tax system. Greece is represented by bronze because the Greeks used bronze as the primary metal in their weapons, which allowed them to conquer all of the Middle East. Rome is represented by iron because Rome used weapons of iron just as Greece used bronze. This final kingdom is pictured as crushing everything that came before it, which aptly describes how the Romans conquered and ruled.

However, the final kingdom of Rome becomes weak and divided over time. This is symbolized by the mixture of iron and soft clay, which will not mix properly. The toes at the bottom of the image also seem to take on significance. The kingdom of Rome splits into multiple kingdoms at the toes. Then, the end for them all comes with the arrival of the great stone. This great stone is Christ Himself. God sent Him to earth to prepare his earthly Kingdom. Christ will then return and utterly destroy the remnant of these earthly kingdoms and setup a new Kingdom that will take up the whole earth and will last forever.

The difficult part of the interpretation for me comes at the very end. It comes particularly with the fact that the final part of the dream appears to involve ten kings who rule ten kingdoms, represented by the ten toes of the statue. This is further reinforced by a parallel dream that Daniel has some years later, which is revealed in Daniel 7
. In that dream, Daniel dreams of four beasts, which represent the same four empires. The final beast has ten horns and then an eleventh, which displaces three of the first ten horns. This places great significance upon the number ten and these ten kings/kingdoms.

My difficulty arises from the fact that Rome is no longer an empire, but at no point in the history of that nation, did it have ten kings or ten kingdoms. One interpretation is that the Roman empire will be revived in the future and the world will be ruled as ten kingdoms. I find this interpretation unsatisfying because the statue is one continuous structure. It seems to me that the toes would be cut off or something if the kingdom was not a continuation.

An interpretation that I find more satisfying is that the way the Roman empire ends with the mixing of iron and clay suggests a sort of gradual failing of the empire. Therefore, the Roman empire, in a way, never ended. Rather, the Romans "will mix with one another in marriage." By my interpretation, the Romans intermarried with the marauding germanic clans that came out of the far east across Russia and eventually settled in Europe. There is no clear date for the end of the Roman Empire. In fact, the empire split into two and then continued to fracture and other kings began to claim the title of Caesar for themselves. The Kaisers ruled from Germany and the Czars ruled from Russia.

Therefore, you could interpret the ten toes as not a literal ten toes, but as all the fractured nations that arose out of the Roman Empire following it's slow decay. On the other hand, these might represent ten literal kingdoms as well, which will gain ascendency out of the long dead ruin of the Romans, but represented by the same peoples. Even now, the blood of Rome is becoming further diluted as it mingles with other nations, such as are arriving in the massive influx of immigrants in Europe and America today. I am not confident enough to declare either as the true interpretation, particularly because the full prophecy of the coming kingdom has not occurred. Who can know such things for certain? However, I can say that the literal ten kingdoms seems more likely to me because numbers in scripture have an uncanny habit of being literally fulfilled, even when they are symbolic in the text.

Lastly, let's finish with Nebuchadnezzar's reaction to this interpretation, as given in Daniel 2:46-49
:

46Then King Nebuchadnezzar fell upon his face and paid homage to Daniel, and commanded that an offering and incense be offered up to him. 47The king answered and said to Daniel, ¿Truly, your God is God of gods and Lord of kings, and a revealer of mysteries, for you have been able to reveal this mystery.¿ 48Then the king gave Daniel high honors and many great gifts, and made him ruler over the whole province of Babylon and chief prefect over all the wise men of Babylon. 49Daniel made a request of the king, and he appointed Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego over the affairs of the province of Babylon. But Daniel remained at the king¿s court.

Nebuchadnezzar finds this interpretation so satisfying, that he falls down and worships Daniel. Nebuchadnezzar was using Daniel as the idol representing God in the same way that a golden image is worshipped in place of the god it represents. In a sense, Daniel's reluctance to share the interpretation was well-founded because Nebuchadnezzar immediately performs an inappropriate worship practice in response to the revelation given by Daniel. It should be specifically noted that Nebuchadnezzar doesn't truly acknowledge God as the one and only God, but just as the highest of all gods. This will become important later.

Nebuchadnezzar ends by making Daniel the ruler of the most important province of Babylon. Daniel passes the actual responsibility of this rule on to his friends so he can remain in the King's court, which is where he felt he could best serve God.

The application I would give is that God has a plan for the future. Parts of that plan have been revealed in a vague way. We know that God will establish a future kingdom that will completely obliterate any kingdom established by man. Given the nature of this dream, I would say, be prepared for this to come to pass soon. The end is nearer today than it was yesterday and by this sign of the times, the time is very near, indeed. We've entered the time of the feet and perhaps even the time of the toes. Our time for turning to God and obeying him grows shorter all the time, which should motivate us to seek to obey him ever more fervently.

Next time, we'll see how Nebuchadnezzar responds to this dream. He builds a monument that attempts to represent his disagreement and, in the process, the three new presidents of the province, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, are tested in the fiery furnace.

Cheers.