The Madness of King Nebuchadnezzar

The Book of Daniel is a patchwork of material, and I can well believe the scholars who hold that it is a compilation of stories rather than the work of a single author.  The first half is composed of short stories about the prophet Daniel and his friends, and the last half, a series of prophetic and surreal visions.  Even in the earlier, narrative portion of the book, every chapter is different.  It starts out in Hebrew; then switches to Aramaic in chapter 2; then in chapter 3 it forgets about the title character and tells a story about these other guys.

And then there’s chapter 4.  In the fourth chapter of Daniel, King Nebuchadnezzar himself gets to tell his own story.  And what a story it is.

King Nebuchadnezzar,
To the peoples, nations and men of every language, who live in all the world:
May you prosper greatly!
It is my pleasure to tell you about the miraculous signs and wonders that the Most High God has performed for me.(Daniel 4:1-2 NIV)

The chapter is framed as a royal proclamation in which the King addresses all his subjects as well as all the people on the earth.  Which as far as Nebuchadnezzar was concerned, amounted to the same thing; we see the same language in other decrees of his mentioned in Daniel.  Yes, his ego was really that big.  That’s kind of the point of this story.

This is the only story in the narrative portion of the Book of Daniel told in the first person.  The last half of the book, describing Daniel’s prophetic dreams, are told from Daniel’s point of view, but he does not narrate the earlier chapters.  This chapter, is a personal account, given not by a prophet or a holy man, but a heathen despot.

Nebuchadnezzar tells of how one day, while lying at home in his palace, happy and contented, he has a terrifying dream.  Something like this happened once before, you may remember, with the dream of the great statue.  And as in the previous instance, he calls upon his court magi, his astrologers, diviners and magicians, to interpret it.  This time, at least, he tells them what the dream was, but they still can’t divine its meaning.

Finally he calls upon Daniel.  In a parenthetical remark, he explains that Daniel is also called Belteshazzar, for the benefit of any of his subjects who find the name “Daniel” hard to spell; and further explains that “...the spirit of the holy gods is in him.” (Daniel 4:8)

Why didn’t Nebuchadnezzar summon Daniel first?  He knows from the previous dream that Daniel is good at this divination stuff; and he had placed Daniel in charge of all the other Wise Guys of Babylon.  Dramatic pacing for one thing.  It adds a touch of suspense and makes for a better story.  And, perhaps from a more practical point of view, because Daniel was in charge of the court magi.  Daniel might have been busy with administrative duties.  You don’t bother the Department Head when one of his subordinates can answer the question for you; you summon his to handle the tough stuff.

I said, “Belteshazzar, chief of the magicians, I know that the spirit of the holy gods is in you, and no mystery is too difficult for you.  Here is my dream; interpret it for me.”  (4:9)

One little touch of this story that I like is that, although Nebuchadnezzar has come to respect the Hebrew God of Daniel, and in this story receives another lesson in that God’s greatness, he does not cease to be a Babylonian.  He still calls Daniel by his Bablyonian name of Belteshazzar, (“Bel protect him”, Bel being another name for the Babylonian god Marduk), and attributes Daniel’s wisdom to the gods collectively, not to one God in particular.  It gives Nebuchadnezzar an individual voice, and he does not seem like a sock puppet for some Jewish writer wishing to put down a moral lesson.  At least that’s how it seems to me.

So Nebuchadnezzar tells Daniel his dream.  It’s of a ginormous tree he sees whose top touches the sky and could be seen from the ends of the earth; whose leaves were beautiful and fruit abundant; a tree big enough to shelter the beasts of the field and the birds of the air and to provide food for all.  It was one big honkin’ tree.

But then a messenger comes down from the heavens; a holy one.  Some translations call it a watchman or a watcher, bringing to mind the Watchers of the Apocryphal Book of Enoch, antediluvian über-angels.  The Watcher commands that the tree be cut down and its branches lopped off; that its leaves be stripped off and its fruits scattered; that the animals living in and underneath the tree be driven off.  The stump shall remain, bound in bronze and iron, in the midst of the grass of the field.

That was certainly weird, but the next part more disturbing.  The Watcher goes on to say:

“Let him be drenched with the dew of heaven, and let him live with the animals among the plants of the earth.  Let his mind be changed from that of a man and let him be given the mind of an animal, till seven times pass for him.”  (4:15-16)

What could this mean?  Nebuchadnezzar is sure that his man Belteshazzar can interpret it; what with him having the spirit of the gods in him and all.

Daniel doesn’t answer right away.  The text says he “...was greatly perplexed for a time, and his thoughts terrified him.”  Not because he didn’t know the dream’s meaning, I think, but because he knew that the king wouldn’t like what he heard.  And here the text switches from First Person back to Third Person.  Yes, it’s inconsistent; but this shifts the focus away from Nebuchadnezzar and how he felt, and to the message.  But the King urges Daniel to lay it on him, and so Daniel does.

“My lord, if only the dream applied to your enemies and its meaning to your adversaries!”  Daniel explains that Nebuchadnezzar himself was that tree, great and strong whose dominion stretches to the ends of the earth.  But for all his greatness, a time will come when he is driven away from people and will live with the wild animals, out in the open, eating the grass of the field.  “Seven times will pass by for you until you acknowledge that the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes.” (4:23-16)

But although the tree would be destroyed, the stump would remain; meaning that Nebuchadnezzar’s kingdom would be restored to him, when he admitted that he was subject to Heaven.

Daniel concludes by begging the king to do what is right and to renounce his wickedness by being kind to the oppressed and offering the hope that his present prosperity may continue.

Was Nebuchadnezzar angered by Daniel’s interpretation?  The text doesn’t say.  But it does say that about twelve months later, the king happened to be walking on the roof of the royal palace of Bablyon and began admiring all that he had accomplished.

“Is not this the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence, by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty?”  (4:29-30)

The city of Babylon had been a relatively small one before the collapse of the Assyrian Empire, but Nebuchadnezzar had built up his capital to be worthy of his new conquests.  He rebuilt the Eteminaki ziggurat, dedicated to Marduk, which had been destroyed by the Assyrian king, Sennacherib; enlarged the palace, and built the Ishtar Gate, largest of the eight gates of Babylon.  According to Herodotus, (who isn’t always accurate, but who knew a good story), Nebuchadnezzar built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, to please his wife who was homesick for the gardens of her native country.  Inscriptions have been found in which Nebuchadnezzar boasts of his building achievements, including one in which he claims to have personally cut down the cedars from Lebanon used in his palace.  Perhaps the dream carried an echo of that boast.

So when Nebuchadnezzar looked out on the city he had built, its massive walls, it’s high temples and opulent palaces, he could not help but swell with pride and say:

“I built that.”

The words have scarcely escaped his lips when a voice comes from heaven and repeats the words of the messenger from his dream.  “This is what is decreed for you, King Nebuchadnezzar:  Your royal authority has been taken from you…”  (4:31)

Immediately, Daniel’s prediction comes to pass.  Nebuchadnezzar loses his reason and thinks he is a cow.  He is driven away from the public and eats grass like cattle and stays out in the wild where he is drenched by the dew of heaven.  His hair grows long like eagle’s feathers and his fingernails like the talons of a bird.

Apparently, this is an actual mental illness in which a person thinks he’s some type of bovine.  It’s called “boanthropy”, which sounds more scientific than “He Thinks He’s A Cow.”  I have to wonder, though, if Nebuchadnezzar’s condition is an ironic reference to the winged bull figures common as guardian spirits in Mesopotamian art.  He worshipped a bulls with the heads of men, and turned into a man with the mind of a cow.

Be that as it may, Nebuchadnezzar remains in this semi-bovine state for “seven times”.  How long is that?  It could mean “seven years”, and that is how the phrase is often rendered; but if the King of Babylon had been missing for seven years, wouldn’t someone have noticed?  Yeah, granted having the king start going about on all fours and saying “Moo” is not something most governments would want to commemorate; but you’d think there would be some sort of record of there being a regent in charge during that period or something like that.

One of the sources I researched claims that a Greek Historian named Abydenus from the 3rd Century BC says that Nebuchadnezzar had been “possessed by some god” and had disappeared.  The actual story from Abydenus, though, seems to be about the king going into a fit and predicting the fall of Babylon and then dying.  It doesn’t seem to fit the Cow story.

The same source states that there is no historical record of Nebuchadnezzar’s governmental activity between 582 B.C. and 575 B.C.  I don’t know enough of Mesopotamian history to know if this is true or not; but I suppose it’s possible that perhaps he was A.W.O.L. during that period and the account in Daniel Chapter 4 is based on an actual proclamation he made to explain where he’d been.

Another source cites an tablet from Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, currently in the British Museum, which seems to describe him suffering some sort of mental breakdown; but the tablet is incomplete and open to interpretation.

2 [Nebu]chadnezzar considered […..]3 His life appeared of no value to [him...]5 And Babylonian speaks bad counsel to Evil-merodach […..]6 Then he gave an entirely different order but [………]7 He does not heed the word from his lips, the cour[tiers……]11 He does not show love to son and daughter […..]12 …family and clan do not exist [………]14 His attention was not directed towards promoting the welfare of Esagil [and Babylon]16 He prays to the Lord of lords, he raised [his hands in supplication….]17 He weeps bitterly to Marduk, the g[reat] god [……] 18 His prayer go forth, to [………]

Suggestive, yes, but the passage could as easily be describing a crippling bout of depression.  Now, if it had the king saying “Moo!” or “There’s nothing like hay for a headache”, why then it would support Daniel’s account a little better.  Maybe that’s on the broken-off part of the tablet.

Or maybe the “seven times” of the Biblical text refers to a shorter period of time: seven months, or even seven weeks.  Raised though I was in a tradition of Biblical Inerrancy, I tend to be suspicious whenever the Bible speaks of numbers like “seven” or “forty”.  It makes me wonder if these numbers are being cited to the most significant decimal, or if they are being used symbolically.  “Seven” is the number of Completion in Hebraic literature, and perhaps “seven times” merely means “the period of time sufficient to fulfill God’s purpose.”

At the end of this period, Nebuchadnezzar regains his senses and his sanity is restored.  He is once again capable of taking over narrating the story.

At the end of that time, I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven, and my sanity was restored.  Then I praised the Most High; I honored and glorified him who lives forever.  (Daniel 4:34)

His advisors and nobles seek him out and he is restored to his throne.  And, dang it all, he becomes even greater than he was before.

Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and exalt and glorify the King of heaven, because everything he does is right and all his ways are just.  And those who walk in pride, he is able to humble.  (Daniel 4:37)

Which isn’t to say that Nebuchadnezzar became a humble man.  Reading his voice in his proclamation I just don’t hear that.  And he was, after all, still king of the Greatest Nation on Earth.  But it’s always healthy for a ruler to remember occasionally that there are things even greater than he.

The Statue Got Me High

The prophet Daniel has a lot in common with Joseph from the book of Genesis.  Both were exiles who found success working as civil servants for a foreign king; both became important administrators in their new homes; and most importantly, both were skilled at interpreting dreams.

We last left Daniel and his friends at the end of Daniel chapter 1 studying at the University of Babylon where they are being trained to serve in the court of King Nebuchadnezzar. The king was impressed by their wisdom and understanding, which greatly surpassed that of any of the magicians and enchanters in his kingdom.

Which brings up a curious side question:  What exactly was Daniel and his friends studying?  The implication I see is that they were studying Astrology and Divination, disciplines which our modern age would call superstition and which the Babylonians would call science and which many Christians would call Satanic. 

Now the text is scrupulous about always crediting Daniel’s wisdom and insights to God; but it still seems highly likely to me that if they Babylonians were going to be teaching him stuff, they would have been teaching him their cutting-edge science.  It may seem strange to call the study of horoscopes Science, but in defense of the Babylonians, the underlying premises of Astrology may be faulty, but they took it damn seriously, and the data they compiled in their study of the stars became useful and important as their system of Astrology developed into the science of Astronomy. 

(I once read an economist remark that many of our sciences started out as superstition; that Astrology became Astronomy and that Alchemy became Chemistry; and that someday we might find out what science will come out of Economics.)

But the point of this that I see is that those who fret that secular learning is dangerous because it isn’t rooted in the Bible forget that Daniel managed to emerge from a thoroughly non-Jewish course of study with his faith in God intact.  I know that my own interests in history, science and fantastic literature has given me perspectives that have, I think, deepened my understanding of my own beliefs. I dare say that gaining an understanding of Babylonian history, culture and laws, as well as Babylonian religion and science, gave him insights which enabled him to better relate to the king and to the members of his court.

But back to the story.  In the second year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, the king became troubled by dreams and unable to sleep.  And here we have a discrepancy.

In chapter 1, we are told that Daniel and his friends came to Babylon in the first year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign and underwent three years of study, entering the king’s service after graduation.  But now this story is taking place during the king’s second year.  What’s the deal with that?  Some critics have tried to explain the discrepancy by saying that the second year mentioned here is dating from the consolidation of his empire after Nebuchadnezzar conquered the Egyptians a couple years after he ascended to the throne.  Or it could be that this story took place while Daniel was still an undergrad.  Or it could be sloppy editing of individual stories which originally came from diverse sources.

Nebuchadnezzar calls together all his magicians, enchanters, sorecerors and astrologers, (“Chaldeans” in the original text; the region of Chaldea in southern Mesopotamia was so identified with the development of astrology that the name became synonymous with “guys who study the stars”).  He commands them to explain his dream.

Then the astrologers answered the king in Aramaic, “O king, live forever!  Tell your servants the dream, and we will interpret it.”  (Daniel 2:4 NIV)

Why does the text make a point of mentioning that the astrologers were speaking in Aramaic?  Well, there’s a reason.  Because at that point, the narrative switches from Hebrew to Aramaic, and continues in that language for the rest of the story and for much of the rest of the whole book.

Aramaic was a language related to both Hebrew and Phoenician, spoken in the region of present-day Syria.  Abraham lived for a time in that land, which is why it is said in the book of Deuteronomy, “My father was a wandering Aramean…” (Deut.26:5).  Aramaic was the language spoken in Assyria, which was a dominant political force through much of the Old Testament period, and the language was important even after Assyria became absorbed into the Babylonian Empire and when Babylon was in turn conquered by the Persian.  It’s generally believed that during the Babylonian Captivity, the Jewish exiles adopted Aramaic, the lingua franca of the empire, for their everyday speech, even after they returned to Judea. They continued using Hebrew in their Scriptures, but had become a language of lore and of religious ritual rather than one of every day conversation.  Although the Gospels were written in Greek, Jesus did most if not all of his teaching in Aramaic, and some of the Gospel writers quote snatches of that language in their narrative.

It is believed that the narrative portion of the Book of Daniel consists of stories written during this Post-Exilic period, and for some reason, the author of the book left them as is, rather than translating them into Hebrew.  The last half of the book, consisting of a series of prophetic visions, shifts back into Hebrew again; perhaps because Aramaic was just to mundane a tongue to do justice to the full weirdity of Daniel’s visions.  But back to the story.

The magicians and professional wonder-workers ask the king to tell him his dream so that they may interpret it, but Nebuchadnezzar isn’t having any of that.  He seems quite testy with his staff seers; perhaps he doesn’t really trust them; perhaps it has occurred to him that if his psychic friends are all that hot, he shouldn’t have to tell them what he dreamed.  Or perhaps, according to some interpretations, he can’t remember what the dream was about and it’s driving him crazy.

The king replied to the astrologers, “This is what I have firmly decided:  If you do not tell me what my dream was and interpret it, I will have you cut into pieces and your houses turned into piled of rubble.  But if you tell me the dream and explain it, you will receive form me gifts and rewards and great honor.  So tell me the dream and interpret it for me.”  (Daniel 2:5-6)

Ouch.  And I thought the James Randi Challenge was tough.  The astrologers admit that what the king asks is impossible.  “What the king asks is too difficult.  No one can reveal it to the king except the gods, and they do not live among men.” (Daniel 2:11)

This angers Nebuchadnezzar, and he orders the execution not just of his court astrologers, but also of all the wise men of Babylon.  This includes Daniel and his friend.

Daniel has the opportunity to speak with Arioch, the commander of the king’s guard, who has been tasked with the responsibility of gathering up all these wise guys.  He speaks to Arioch “with wisdom and tact” and learns the whole story.  Daniel asks for a little more time so that he can try interpreting the dream himself.

Daniel goes back to his friends Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, (better known as Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego) and they pray asking God for mercy and enlightenment so that they can answer the king’s riddle and save their own lives as well as the lives of the other magi.

In the night, Daniel also has a dream and in it the mystery is revealed.  The ghost is actually the shady banker in disguise.  Wait.  Wrong mystery.

The narrative pauses here for a moment as Daniel utters a psalm praising God as the source of wisdom and power, who reveals deep and hidden mysteries.

Although in this story, Daniel receives the solution to a mystery by Divine Revelation, there are other stories involving Daniel, the canonicity of which are disputed, in which Daniel actually employs deductive reasoning to uncover crimes, making Daniel the only detective in the Bible.  I hope to tell some of these other stories another time.

Daniel is brought before Nebuchadnezzar to explain it all.

“No wise man, enchanter, magician or diviner can explain to the king the mystery he has asked about, but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries.  He has shown King Nebuchadnezzar what will happen in the days to come.”  (Daniel 2:27-28)

The king’s dream was of a tremendous statue, the head of which was made of gold, the chest and arms of silver, the belly and thighs of bronze, the legs of iron and the feet and toes of iron mixed with clay.  As the king observed the statue in his dream, a large rock was cut out, not by human hand.  The rock struck the feet of the statue, causing them to crumble and the entire statue to collapse in a ruin.  The rock then grew to the size of a mountain encompassing the whole earth.

That was the dream; but what did it mean?

The golden head of the statue, Daniel said, represented Nebuchadnezzar himself and his glorious kingdom, given to him by the God of heaven.  The silver torso represented the kingdom which would succeed him, spiffy, but not quite as impressive as his own.  Then a third kingdom, one of bronze, which would rule over the whole earth, and finally a fourth one, as strong as iron, but not wholly so; a mixture of strength and weakness which would not remain united. (And yes, this is where the expression “Feet of Clay” comes from, meaning an underlying character flaw in an otherwise admired figure).

Finally, the rock cut out of a mountain but not by human hands represented a kingdom which God would someday establish which would not be destroyed but would endure forever.

Nebuchadnezzar was impressed by Daniel’s revelation of his dream and by the interpretation of it.  “Surely your God is the God of gods and the Lord of kings and a revealer of mysteries, for you were able to reveal this mystery” (Daniel 2:47)  The king gave Daniel a high position in his court in charge of his staff magi, and appointed his friends to posts as administrators.

But looking back with historical hindsight, did Daniel’s prophecy come true?

The traditional interpretation of both Jewish and Christian scholars is that Four Kingdoms of the statue represent (1) the Babylonian Empire of Nebuchadnezzar; (2) the Empire of the Medes and the Persians which conquered Babylon after Nebuchadnezzar’s death; (3) the Greek Empire of Alexander the Great, who conquered the known world, and of his successors, specifically the Seleucid Dynasty which ruled over the former Babylonian territories and which squabbled with the Ptolemies of Egypt for control of Palestine; (4) Rome, the mightiest empire of all, but one which eventually fell to internal weakness and division.

Christians like to interpret the carved by no human hand as the Christian Church, established by God and outlasting the kingdoms of men and growing to fill the whole earth.  Some later Christian groups with a more eschatological bent, interpret the mixed feet of the statue as representing a later successor to the Roman Empire and the rock as the Millennial Kingdom to be established once Christ Comes Again.

More modern scholars have been skeptical of Daniel’s prescient visions, and assume that the kingdoms described in the dream are ones the writer would have been familiar with.  Because much of Daniel is written in Aramaic, and because some of the later prophecies in the book seem to specifically refer to the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes, the Seleucid ruler who incited the Maccabean Revolt, it’s generally thought that the Book of Daniel was written, or at least compiled in its final form, during the time of the Maccabees.  Under this interpretation, the golden head remains Babylon, but the silver torso becomes the kingdom of the Medes, and the brass belly that of the Persians.  The iron legs then become the succeeding period of Greek rulers.  Except that the Medes and the Persians did not rule one after the other; they were ethnic divisions within the same Empire.  I don’t know how this interpretation regards the rock; perhaps as a hopeful anticipation of a Messianic Age.

These two interpretations are based on the assumptions that either (A) Daniel was writing about future events revealed by Divine Revelation, or (B) Daniel was written later using 20/20 hindsight and pretending to make predictions about things that had already happened.  Another possibility occurs to me.

It doesn’t take either divine foreknowledge or historical hindsight to know that Nebuchadnezzar’s kingdom wouldn’t last forever.  Eventually it would pass and be superseded by something else, and that this new kingdom too would fade away.  So how do Daniel’s predictions about these future kingdoms compare to what really happened?

In some ways, the historical record of Empire in the Middle East is the exact opposite of that predicted in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream.  He dreamt of four kingdoms, each succeeding one inferior to the one before.  As it turned out, the Persian Empire was larger and lasted longer than the Babylonian; the Greek Empire, (if we count the Seleucid Dynasty) lasted even longer, and Rome longest of all.

True, the Empire of Alexander covered pretty much the entire world that Nebuchadnezzar knew about; and the Roman Empire was renowned for its strength, yet ultimately became divided, so those points match… sort of… if we squint at them in just the right light.

Or perhaps Daniel was framing his interpretation in such a way to make Nebuchadnezzar look good.  “Here are the kingdoms which will succeed your own; but none of them will be as glorious as yours.”

And what about the Rock?  I have to admit, I like the interpretation that the Rock is Christ and the kingdom which he told Pilate was “not of this world.”

In the latter part of the book, Daniel revisits this prophecy; recounting a vision of four beasts, once again symbolizing four kingdoms to come, and here he gets even more apocalyptic; but that is another vision for another time.