This is the second part of this Book of Daniel bible study. This part is the transcript of Daniel 2 Commentary and Bible Study by William H Shea. Click here for Introduction to the Book of Daniel and Daniel 1 Commentary.
Daniel 2 Commentary
Well, we come to Daniel chapter two. We’ll do that also this morning. It’s part of the historical chapters but it’s really prophetic. In actuality Daniel does not really serve as a prophet here, he serves us what we might call an inspired wise man. God doesn’t give him the dream primarily, he gives the dream to the king, and the king as you know so well in the story is disturbed the next morning. He can’t eat breakfast because of that nightmare. But he can’t remember what the nightmare was. So he calls in the wise men,
Now an interesting feature of the Book of Daniel is that it’s written in two languages. There are just a few books of the Bible that are written in two languages. Book of Ezra is written in two languages because the decrees of the Persian kings are given in Aramaic and the rest of the book is in Hebrew. There’s one verse in Jeremiah that’s in Aramaic and there’s one verse in Genesis that is Aramaic.
And Daniel is the other book that has two languages and people have always been puzzled as to why. Daniel chapter two to chapter seven are in Aramaic chapter one and chapter eight through twelve are in Hebrew. I don’t have a final answer for that question but I think there’s a partial answer here because of when the Aramaic language starts and it starts in verse four, chapter two of Daniel. “So the Chaldeans come to the king and they spoke to the king in Aramaic “O king live forever tell the dream””. And that’s where the Aramaic writing starts in. So the Aramaic language is a function of direct address and it continues until the end of the prophecy in Daniel seven.
So the king makes a most unusual request. Now interpretation of dreams and magic and predictions were common. Very very common in Nineveh and in Babylon. You may have heard of the library of King Ashurbanipal. A lot of it, a lot of it is astrology or how to read livers. They would kill a sheep. They take the liver and if one knob of the liver was a little bigger than the other side they’d say well this means that so and so is going to happen. If a child with congenital anomalies was born, It was taken as a sign that so and so was going to happen. So these texts are full of this kind of stuff. Astrology. Signs. So these are the professionals of that but the professionals can’t do the job.
And so the king can see that these guys are just putting on a front. He says well, look, anybody can tell you a dream and you can give the interpretation of the dream. You can say anything. But if you really want to show that you really know what you’re doing tell me the dream too. That’s a little harder. And so he says you’re a bunch of rascals. This is fraud and you’re going to lose your necks over it. And he issues a decree.
But news of the decree comes to Daniel and so he asked the man who is named now in Chapter two as Ariel. He asked him if he could go before the King and talk to the King about this. And so that’s what we have come along about in verses fourteen to sixteen. And so he is given time. He is given time so they go home and that night they have a prayer meeting.
What a prayer meeting! Have you ever prayed when your life was dependent upon it. Well some of you may have been soldiers in a trench in a war some place. And as they say there’s no atheists in foxholes. So you may have prayed as if your life counted upon it. But they knew if they didn’t get an answer to this prayer the following morning they were going to be executed. But God graciously gives them not only the dream but the interpretation of the dream.
And there’s this beautiful poem of glory to God Daniel of course always attributes all of this to God not to himself or his own wisdom. Daniel 2 verse 19 “then the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a night vision. Then Daniel blessed the God of heaven; and said, “Let the name of God be blessed forever and ever and ever for wisdom and power belong to him. It is he who changes the times and seasons. He removes kings; then establishes Kings; he gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to men of understanding. It is he who reveals the profound and hidden things . He knows what is in the darkness and the light dwells with him. To you O God of my fathers I give thanks and praise for you have given me wisdom and power. Even now you have made known to me what we requested of you”.
See that’s the theme of the Book of Daniel. He sets up kings and he takes down Kings as we look at human history. It may seem to us that there is no order or explanation or purpose to it all. Not so.
Joseph Stalin was talking about the pope and he said how many divisions of troops does he have. And look where Stalin is today. We recently commemorated the falling of the wall of Berlin. President Reagan said “Mr Gorbachev tear down that wall”. And it came down so that today we have a united Germany in front of us.
One of the themes of the Book of Daniel is the question of who has dominion. And that’s one of the themes of the prophecy that was given here. And one of the themes of the prophecy in Daniel Chapter seven. And so Babylon had dominion for a time but they lost it; and Persia had dominion for a time but they lost it; and Greece had dominion for a time but they lost it; and Rome had dominion for a time but they lost it; and so it goes. And so we are here victims to this ever ongoing cycle of new rulers after old rulers new rulers after old rulers and sometimes or maybe even quite frequently the new rulers are worse than the old rulers.
And we ask the question will it ever be like this? Is there no answer to it? But in this vision and in the rest of the visions of the Book of Daniel, God gives Daniel the answer and the answer here in this vision is the stone Kingdom. But before the stone Kingdom comes there is the sequence of metals. Now this is the basic skeleton vision or dream of the Book of Daniel. The image just stands there; he doesn’t do anything; he doesn’t walk away; he doesn’t go over and consequent conquer something he just stands there and exists. And so as there was a sequence of metals. So there was to be a sequence of kingdoms and the sequence of course is the gold, silver, bronze, iron, iron mixed with clay.
And as I often say a good Adventist can say Babylon, Medo Persia, Greece, and Rome faster than a Catholic can spin their prayer beads. How do we know that sequence? Well, it starts with the interpretation. When we get to verse thirty-six, “you o king are that head of gold” and then he goes on to say after you will arise another kingdom.
Notice the word kingdom inferior to you. Very interesting that he would say you Nebuchadnezzar, you are the kingdom of Babylon. There’s a good reason for that. The Neo Babylonian Kingdom lasted seventy years and during those seventy years, Nebuchadnezzar reigned for forty three of them.
And he also built the kingdom of Babylon, the Empire Babylon, by military conquest and he built the city of Babylon. So you could say that Nebuchadnezzar and Babylon were virtually equivalent. And what came after Nebuchadnezzar was a series of less or more unimportant kings until we get to Belshazzar in chapter five and we’ll see him tomorrow.
So Persia follows and after Persia comes Greece and we have the story of the transition to Persia right in the Book of Daniel. The transition to Greece happened after the Old Testament ended and then finally comes Rome in the time of Jesus.
Daniel 2 Commentary: King Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream Statue or Image
Now there’s a very interesting feature here which shows directly divine inspiration. It’s not just that this image covers 2,500 years of history. You see liberals, critical scholars, scholars critical of the Bible say well yes a prophet could guess what was to happen immediately after their own time. For instance Jeremiah, he could see that Nebuchadnezzar was stronger than Judea. But to guess what was going to happen five hundred or seven hundred or eight hundred or a thousand years in advance that’s impossible. That’s impossible to the rational human mind. But to God it is not impossible. And that’s what he gave Daniel here.
And there’s a proof right in the prophecy itself that that was the case. You see critics of the Book of Daniel say it was written in the second century B.C. not in the sixth century. The book itself presents itself as having been written in the sixth century B.C. So we have these two points of view. Was Daniel written in the sixth century B.C. or the second century B.C.. Well historical evidence like we’ve cited this morning already shows really that it was written in the sixth century B.C.
But let’s take the case. Let’s take the case that it might have been written in the second century B.C. If this was an ordinary human guess what would you say was going to come. What was going to happen. Well, we have four kingdoms right, Babylon, Medo Persia, Greece, Rome. So we should have had a fifth kingdom, sixth kingdom, seventh kingdom; It should keep going like that. Right?
Or that alternate human theory would be that Rome would stand forever. You know Hitler thought the Third Reich was going to stand for a thousand years and it lasted about five years. So man proposes but God disposes. So let’s take the alternative that Rome was going to stand forever. In fact Josephus when he writes up this prophecy says that. And there’s a reason why he says that. It’s because he’s writing to a Roman audience and he wants to show the Romans what a great people they have conquered in Judea so he doesn’t mention the divided kingdom or the stone kingdom to follow.
So these would be the two natural human guesses. If you have a fourth kingdom, you have a fifth, the sixth, the seventh and so forth. Or the fourth kingdom, the iron kingdom that smashes and crashes will stand forever. Daniel does not fall easily of those ordinary human theories. He says there would be just four kingdoms, four Mediterranean world kingdoms, and the fourth one will be divided. How did he know that. He knew that because God told him.
He picks the least likely human alternative because God showed it to him. He does not take the two human alternatives,. Rationalistic humanistic alternatives. He picks the one which God has shown him. So there’s evidence right here in this prophecy that this is indeed an inspired prophecy from God. That God knew not only what was going to happen in general in the future but precisely what was going to happen. And so it did.
I’ll tell you of my own personal experience with Daniel chapter two. I was raised in a household where my mother was an Episcopalian and my father was an agnostic. So we got to church once in a while, at least, Christmas and Easter but not very often. So we moved to a town, Ontario, California and we just happened to end up across the street from a family of Seventh Day Adventists with teenagers my age with whom I went to school. And they invited me to their church and so I went. To show you how religious I was, this was Easter Sunday. I had been painting our house. I had paint spattered clothes and paint spattered t-shirt when I went into the Adventist church.
And there was the image of Daniel 2. First time I ever entered the Adventist church. The image of Daniel 2. My first encounter with the Adventist church. And ever since I’ve been indebted to the book of Daniel. Well, this is my experience with Daniel chapter 2 and the prophecy in the book of Daniel is true. The course of history is followed as it is shown here and so we can have faith and trust and confidence in the Word of God and the Book of Daniel and in the messages as they become more detailed in the following chapters.
Related:
Who Is The King of The North in Daniel 11 – Dwight Nelson Sermon
Daniel 9 Explained – Clifford Goldstein Bible Study
Book of Daniel chapter 7 Commentary and Study by William H Shea
Prophet Daniel: Study of Daniel Chapter 3-6 by William H Shea
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