Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Daniel · About this commentary
A Kingdom That Will Never Be Destroyed
Daniel 2:44-45
44 “In the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed, nor will its sovereignty be left to another people; but it will break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it will stand forever. · WEB
The dream's climax is a kingdom God himself sets up in the era of the divided feet — never conquered, never handed on, and it does not share the earth with what it replaces.
In the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed, nor will its sovereignty be left to another people; but it will break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it will stand forever Daniel 2:44.
Everything the chapter has been building toward is in this sentence, and its first phrase fixes the timing. In the days of those kings — not in Babylon's days, not in the iron's days, but in the days of the divided feet, the last stage of the sequence. The stone struck the image there Daniel 2:34, and the interpretation keeps it there. Whatever else is disputed about this prophecy, the dream will not let its climax be moved earlier in the chain.
The kingdom is defined by four clauses, and each is set against something the metals could not do. The God of heaven will set up — the other kingdoms rose Daniel 2:39; this one is erected, by the same God who removes kings and sets up kings Daniel 2:21. Never be destroyed — every metal above it was. Nor will its sovereignty be left to another people — the fatal weakness of empires is succession, and the gold handed to silver, the silver to bronze, the bronze to iron; this kingdom has no heir because it needs none. It will stand forever — the duration promised to the throne of David's son and given to the everlasting kingdom of the saints 2 Samuel 7:16 Daniel 7:27.
And one clause is not gentle: it will break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms. The stone did not negotiate a place among the metals or reform them from within; it ground them to chaff Daniel 2:35. The kingdom of God in this dream does not arrive as a gradual improvement of the fourth empire's institutions, nor does it take its turn as a fifth power. It ends the succession. What the prophets called the day of the Lord and the last book of Scripture shows as the kingdoms of this world becoming the Lord's Revelation 11:15 is one event, and it is the last one on this chart.
Because you saw that a stone was cut out of the mountain without hands... the great God has made known to the king what will happen hereafter. The dream is certain, and its interpretation sure Daniel 2:45.
The stone is now said to come out of the mountain, and the mountain was already there before the stone struck — the kingdom that fills the earth at the end is quarried from a dominion that existed all along. The stone is a scriptural figure with a settled history: the stone the builders rejected, made the head of the corner Psalms 118:22 Matthew 21:42; the tried stone laid in Zion Isaiah 28:16; the stone on which men stumble and which falls in judgment Luke 20:18 1 Peter 2:6–8. The New Testament makes the identification without hesitation, and so does this book, which will show the same dominion given to one like a son of man coming with the clouds Daniel 7:13–14.
The dream is certain, and its interpretation sure. Two of the four kingdoms had not yet appeared when this was spoken; the division of the fourth was six centuries away. The reason this book teaches its readers to hold steady is not optimism — it is that the chart has been right so far, and the last item on it has not changed.
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