Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Daniel · About this commentary
The Dream That Troubled the King
Daniel 2:1-6
1 In the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar dreamed dreams; and his spirit was troubled, and his sleep went from him. · WEB
A dream God sends to a pagan king breaks his sleep, and his impossible demand exposes the whole professional apparatus of Babylonian wisdom.
In the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar dreamed dreams; and his spirit was troubled, and his sleep went from him Daniel 2:1.
The greatest prophetic outline in the Old Testament is delivered, in the first instance, to a man who does not worship God — and it arrives as insomnia. Nebuchadnezzar is at the height of everything: young, victorious, master of the world's leading power, and unable to sleep. The book's God speaks to whom he will, in the language a man will hear; Pharaoh got a dream about cattle Genesis 41:1–7, and Nebuchadnezzar gets one about himself. Scripture reports without embarrassment that the Most High takes trouble over the anxieties of an idolater, because the point is not the dreamer's merit but his position — a king's night terror is about to become a chart of history for every reader after him.
The date is worth a note. This is the second year of the reign, while the four exiles were reckoned as still in a three-year program Daniel 1:5; the years are counted from the campaign in which they were taken, on the accession-year convention the region used, and the training is evidently finished — Daniel is already inside the class of men the death decree hunts Daniel 2:13.
The king said to them, "I have dreamed a dream, and my spirit is troubled to know the dream" Daniel 2:3.
He summons the full apparatus — the magicians, the enchanters, the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans Daniel 2:2, four guilds of trained specialists, the empire's science of the unseen. And at their reply the book's language changes: from the Chaldeans' answer here to the end of chapter seven the text runs in Aramaic, the international tongue Daniel 2:4. What follows is addressed to the nations in the nations' own words. Their answer is the standard professional formula, and it is confident: O king, live forever! Tell your servants the dream, and we will show the interpretation.
The king answered the Chaldeans, "The thing has gone from me. If you don't make known to me the dream and its interpretation, you will be cut in pieces, and your houses will be made a dunghill" Daniel 2:5.
And the king moves the goalposts to a place no human skill can reach: produce the dream itself, then interpret it. Whether he has genuinely lost the details or is testing men he has begun to distrust, the demand is a masterstroke — a dream interpreter can always improvise, but no one can guess another man's dream. Behind the tyranny, providence: the one requirement Babylon's wisdom cannot satisfy is the one requirement placed on it. The threats and the bribes are both extravagant Daniel 2:6, and neither can conjure information out of a system that does not have any. Before God gives Daniel the answer, he empties the room of every rival to it.
held with reason What this mark means