the dreams of a king
“In the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams; his spirit was troubled, and his sleep left him.” (Daniel 2:1)
One of the most amazing and under appreciated stories in Scripture is the redemption arc of Nebuchadnezzar; before the apocalyptic visions of Daniel, long before Daniel faced the lions’ den, we are told that “Nebuchadnezzar had dreams.”
Much later in life, Daniel, well established and respected within Babylon, would see apocalyptic visions highlighting not only the coming tribulation of the End of Days but also, more importantly, the powerful and merciful redemption of God over all things. Furthermore, to say that Daniel’s visions refer to one specific period of time would entirely miss the beauty of the story; the visions in the later chapters of Daniel provide a prophetic depiction of both the end of all things as well as the end of the age. There is a reason why Christ, throughout the Gospel of Mark, identifies himself as the Son of Man in direct reference to the prophecies of Daniel. At the end of all things, Christ will return in glory and establish His lasting kingdom cleansed of all unrighteousness—on that day “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4). But, also fitting with the prophetic visions of Daniel, we also read from the same author (the author of Revelation) that Christ cleansed the temple of its abominations and declared that He would “destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:13-19). It must be understood that the apocalyptic visions of Daniel exist in a two-fold nature. First, at the end of things, Christ will restore creation, establish His kingdom, and reign in glory forever; and, second and just like it, the life, death and resurrection of Christ, the Gospel itself, marked an end of an age, the releasing of the power of the Gospel in which Christ offers restoration to all, He invites us to join His kingdom, and He reigns with all authority in heaven and earth. As Christ started His ministry, He announced the arrival of the kingdom of heaven, the fulfillment of the year of jubilee (Leviticus 25), the arrival of the day of the Lord (Luke 4:16-21); from there, He healed the sick and maimed, casted out demons, raised the dead, preached the way of the Kingdom, and cleansed the Temple of the thieves defiling it. The two-folded nature of the apocalyptic visions of Daniel make the book of Daniel a beloved source of both comfort and grace as well as future warning partnered with unwavering security. However, while the later visions and provided interpretations included much more specificity, Daniel was not the first recipient of these glorious visions—visions of which even “angels long to look” (1 Peter 1:12). Instead, God, in His infinite wisdom, first granted these visions to another: “Nebuchadnezzar had dreams” (Daniel 2:1).
To understand the importance of such a simple statement we must first understand who this man was and what roles he played in history. In short, he was not an example of one who would typically be considered a worthy vessel for the visions of the most glorious works of heaven. While we already know that Nebuchadnezzar is the Chaldean king of Babylon who conquered Judah and determined that many should be exiled and enslaved, many forget the manner in which he decided to conquer Jerusalem. At the end of his campaign, he “killed their young men with the sword in the house of the sanctuary and had no compassion on young man or virgin, old man, or aged” (2 Chronicles 36:17) To add insult to injury, Nebuchadnezzar “burned the house of God and broke down the wall of Jerusalem and burned all its palaces with fire and destroyed all its precious vessels.” He was well understood to be the “Evil-merodach king of Babylon” (2 Kings 25:27). Nebuchadnezzar was a bloodthirsty conqueror with an insatiable bloodlust. Furthermore, his devotion to the Babylonian god, Merodach, was well understood throughout the known world; and, according to the Babylonians, Merodach was the god of creation, water, agriculture, justice, and magic. Throughout his life, God would challenge each of these so-called powers of Merodach, stripping Nebuchadnezzar of any and all reverence for the demonic entity of Babylon; but, that road to redemption was harsh because Nebuchadnezzar’s faith in the demonic was deeply personal.
Nebuchadnezzar’s campaign to conqueror and destroy Jerusalem ended in 586 BC resulting in the exile of Daniel and his companions. Approximately fourteen years prior, Nebuchadnezzar had other ambitions. In a location about eighty miles south of modern day Bagdad, at a site known as Borsippa, Nebuchadnezzar was demonically inspired to finish a project that others previously could not. Written on clay pots known as the Birs Cylinders (discovered and translated by Sir Henry Rawlinson), Nebuchadnezzar wrote his intentions for one of the greatest projects undertaken during his reign. He wrote:
“I am Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon… my great lord has established me in strength, and has urged me to repair his buildings… the Tower of Babylon, I have made and finished … the Tower of Borsippa had been built by a former king. He had completed 42 [cubits?], but he did not finish its head; from the lapse of time it had become ruined… the rain and wet had penetrated into the brickwork; the casing of burnt brick had bulged out… Merodach, my great lord, inclined my heart to repair the building. I did not change its site, nor did I destroy its foundation platform; but, in a fortunate month, and upon an auspicious day, I undertook the rebuilding… I set my hand to build it up, and to finish its summit. As it had been in ancient times, so I built up its structure.”
Later, Julius Oppert offered a slightly different translation of a small portion of the Birs Cylinders. In his translation, the phrase reads:
“Since a remote time, people had abandoned it without order expressing their words.”
It should also be noted that the word borsippa means “tongue tower.” Furthermore, on the ceremonial stone known as Tower of Babel Stele, we read that Nebuchadnezzar sought to complete the tower with the very same intentions of its original designers.
“Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon am I: In order to complete [the towers] Etemenanki and Eurmeiminanki, I mobilized all countries everywhere… the base I filled in to make a high terrace. I built their structures with bitumen and baked brick throughout. I completed it raising its top to the heaven…”
Before meeting Daniel, before dreaming the dreams of heaven, Nebuchadnezzar was demonically inspired to finish building the Tower of Babel, to have its height reach heaven, because his heart was stirred by the one whom he called lord—Merodach, the demonic spirit of Babylon (who, according to Nebuchadnezzar himself, was the original influencer for the building of the Tower of Babel). In Genesis, we were told that the original intent of the tower was to give humanity a name that rivaled heaven.
“And they said to one another, ‘Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.’ And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.’” (Genesis 11:3-4)
Before dreaming dreams of eternal apocalyptic importance, Nebuchadnezzar indiscriminately slaughtered the people of God, pillaged their treasures, worshipped a demon, finished building a tower dedicated to a demonic entity as an insult to heaven, and burned down the house of God in Jerusalem. And, this is the one to whom God revealed His mysterious glory. To any who have considered themselves too far gone, beyond the hope of salvation, and unworthy to receive the goodness of the gift of the Gospel, remember Nebuchadnezzar. Even in his self-idolizing life of wickedness, even in his tangible commitments to demonic worship, even in his murderous ambitions, even in his blasphemies against heaven, God sought him—chased him—surrounded him with the influence of God-honoring men, and spoke to him with grand dreams. If he was not too far gone, then neither are you.
And, the vision he received was extraordinary. After challenging all the wise counselors of the empire to complete the impossible task of conjuring from nothing the content of his dream in addition to supplying an accurate interpretation, Daniel, having been granted by the grace of God the required knowledge, approached Nebuchadnezzar.
“You saw, O king, and behold, a great image. This image, mighty and of exceeding brightness, stood before you, and its appearance was frightening. The head of this image was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its middle and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. As 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. Then 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. This was the dream.” (Daniel 2:31-36a)
Gold, silver, bronze, and iron inappropriately mixed with clay. Many have provided extensive details as to what each historically represents, but only two specifics can be guaranteed. First, the great figure’s head of gold represents the empire of Nebuchadnezzar; furthermore, until the end, this kingdom, Nebuchadnezzar’s grand empire, would be the greatest in all the earth—Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon would be superior to all the others (Daniel 2:32 and 2:38). The second assurance is that the stone not cut by human hands, that stands separate from the great image, that will be responsible for the destruction of the great image, and that will establish an everlasting kingdom is representative of the coming Son of Man and His dominion over all the earth (Daniel 2:34-35 and 2:44-45). For what cannot be assured specifically and strictly through Scripture, scholars have suggested a few options.
The most popular perspective for silver, bronze, and iron identifies those kingdoms as being the Persian Empire, the Medo-Persian Empire (which was a unification of the Median and Persian Empires and was also known as the Achaemenid Empire), and the Greek Empire. This interpretation obviously holds merit. The only criticism of this interpretation worth suggesting is the obvious absence of the Roman Empire; it is an absence that should be keenly felt since it was in partnership with the strength and resources of the Roman Empire that Antiochus IV Epiphanes (king of the Seleucid Empire from 175 BC until his death in 164 BC), the likely antichrist precursor described later in the Book of Daniel, was able to inflict a reign of persecution on the Jewish people as described in the Maccabees. Therefore, an alternative interpretation may also be suggested with equal merit.
The great figure’s head of gold is symbolic of the Babylonian Empire of Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 2:32 and 2:38); and, it was a specified interpretation that Nebuchadnezzar took to heart quite literally as seen in the next chapter of the Book of Daniel (Daniel 3:1). The silver chest and arms (Daniel 2:32 and 2:45) of the figure is representative of the Persian Empires in all their varying forms; it may even be suggested that one portion (chest or arms) is symbolic of the Persian Empire while the other is the Medo-Persian unification. The great image’s bronze middle and thighs (Daniel 2:32 and 2:39) are representations of the Greek Empire—again, perhaps with one portion (middle or thighs) representing the Greek Empire generally with the other being the unique and substantial reign of Alexander the Great. The iron legs (Daniel 2:33 and 2:40), then, represent Rome. This interpretation allows for continued consideration for the odd addition of the figure’s feet which are an unusual and inappropriate mixture of iron and clay (Daniel 2:41 and 2:43).
“And 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. And as the toes of the feet were partly iron and partly clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly brittle. As 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.” (Daniel 2:41-43)
We know historically that, long before the establishment of the Greek Orthodox Church, the Roman Empire became unsuitably intertwined and married with Christianity resulting in the establishment of the Roman Catholic Church—symbols representing the Trinity were, eventually, even painted on the shields of the Roman soldiers. Furthermore, clay was a common Biblical description for the people of God (Jeremiah 18:1-6, Romans 9:20-21). Therefore, the feet of the figure may be symbolic of the marriage between Rome and the Church, an inappropriate mixture, a marriage doomed to fail from the start.
Nevertheless, in the end, all will fade away, all will be destroyed. In the end, nothing will stand in the way of the coming kingdom of God, no empire will resist the glorious reign of the Son of Man, the coming Messiah.
This is God’s message to us through the visions of Daniel. This was God’s alluring message to Nebuchadnezzar beckoning him to repentance, redemption, and divine union.