Bible Commentaries

Nebuchadnezzar's Dream

Daniel 4:1-18

It does us good to hear how a man like Nebuchadnezzar spoke. We do not know what we ourselves have said, as to its effect, until we have heard some other man repeat our own words. The speaker never exactly expresses himself. He is talking to his own consciousness, and is often approved by himself; he therefore supposes that other people can hear what he is speaking to his own spirit. He does not give utterance to all his thought, that is to say, an outside aspect and effect. The speaker hears his own tones; he also hears, as it were, spiritual tones when none but himself can hear. Not, therefore, until we hear other people read our letters do we know what we have written: we are not ashamed of the letters, but we are ashamed of their reading of them. We do not know our own sermons until we hear other people quote from them; then in very deed we are ashamed that we ever preached. Quotation is the ruin of eloquence. The quotation shows how short we have fallen of our purpose. It is interesting beyond all other studies in words to hear an out-and-out worldling talk about religion; it is refreshing, exhilarating, surprising, confounding. We should listen to Nebuchadnezzar. How wondrously he mixes up gleams of the true faith with the strange crosslights of his own pagan thought and heathen education! He is perfectly willing to mix up ideas respecting any number of gods with the ideas which he has derived from the study of his own mythology. Nor must we be amused at him as at a unique specimen of the genus theologia. We are always mixing thoughts that have no proper or vital relation to one another. Herein again is that saying true, Ye cannot mix, or serve, or intermingle God and mammon. The speech of the Church is partly Christian and partly pagan The whole utterance of the Church needs revision, filtration, sanctification. In this chapter Nebuchadnezzar is both heathen and Israelitish; there is part of himself and part of Daniel in his talk; he is in an initial state of education into higher mysteries; and it is delightful to hear how this infantile giant tries to talk the new speech.

Nebuchadnezzar was an instance of sudden conversion: he began instantaneously to preach and testify and publish; he went into authorship before he was a week old in the new faith. That was characteristic of the man's ardour: he was an urgent, furious, tempestuous Daniel 4:2). This was a fine passion. Here indeed is a sign of reality. A wonderful change is marked by this new thought. Many men who look upon Nebuchadnezzar as a pagan could allow all the signs and wonders of God to pass by without note, comment, or record. We have filled up our diaries with chaff; we ought to have stored their pages as garners are stored with wheat. Many have risen to see the dawn of day from some mountain tower, and have all the while regretted that they got up so soon. Many persons allow a whole summer to pass away without ever seeing a flower; yet they think they see it. When we charge men with not having read the Bible they say they read it through once every year. Perfectly Daniel 4:6-7).

In exalting God, are we to be outdone by a heathen king? Have we nothing to say for our God, our Master, our Christ, the Cross by which we are saved? Is our piety to be dumb? Are our prayers to be so spoken that none may hear them? Is there no place for enthusiasm in the service of the Church? Exclamation may be argument, enthusiasm may be logic with wings, reason on fire. Are we to take no heed of spiritual expressions? Nebuchadnezzar had his dreams, and remembered them, and encouraged them, and dwelt upon them, and sought interpretations from them. Have we no dreamings of a moral kind? Are there no efforts of imagination which require to be explained? Are spiritual impressions nothing? Is the world we can see all there is to be seen or appreciated or valued or appropriated? What! has it come to this: that we have life that could grasp the heavens, and yet must feed it with a handful of dust? It cannot be; the irony is its own answer. Is it of no account that all the wise men have failed? Christ has not yet been written down. The very noblest attempt that ever has been made to reduce Jesus Christ to insignificance has but formed part of the pedestal on which he stands in infinite uniqueness and unparalleled glory. Where are those wise men themselves? Ah me! they wrote when they were in mid-life, when the blood was full and hot, when the world was applauding and cheering and paying; but when these same assailants had to put their own theories to the test they found their polysyllables were hard pillows on which to lay a dying head. No religion is complete that forsakes a man when he is an invalid, when he has lost all his money, when his friends have withdrawn from him and left him in loneliness; no religion is worth cultivating that will not sit up with the sick man all night, and a hundred nights, and never say, I am tired. The religion of Jesus Christ has proved itself practically; it has a sublime argument and is itself an argument sublime: but when it comes to practical service, the real service of Daniel 4:19-37

"Then Daniel 4:19-22).

This is the personal application of truth. What is an interpretation if it be not followed by an application? What is a sermon if it end not in a tremendous appeal? The great fathers of the pulpit were mighty in exhortation. They wrestled with their hearers. We have retained the exposition and the criticism, and the eloquence to some extent, but the application we have cut off, because we dare not offend the tastes of people who are going down to hell on the swift steed of self-flattery. Say what figure in history is grander, as representing the idea of ministry, than that of Daniel before Nebuchadnezzar, a prisoner before a king, a captive in the house of a man who could crush him with a word or destroy him with a frown? Yet this Daniel 4:25).

Some men require violent teaching. We will not obey God's love: when he whispers to us we do not hear him; unless he take up the trumpet of his thunder, we pay no attention to the voice of Heaven. Pleasant angels have come to seek us and bring us home, but we have declined their evangel and their gospel and their company; summer has come, with spring on one side and autumn on the other, all beautiful and rich, abounding in all things lovely and useful; and they have said they have come to bring us back to heaven, and we have defied the whole of them. Not until God takes up the rod of his lightning do we begin to be religious. A plague would fill the church; an epidemic would make a prayer-meeting at five o"clock in the morning seasonable: we are cowards! Yet, blessed be God, he does not withhold violence if it will do us good. If we will not have the company of angels we shall be thrust into the society of beasts, and in that humiliation we may be willing to listen to terms and proposals that otherwise would have fallen upon deaf ears; and there in the open field, with only beasts to talk to, we may begin to pray.

What was the end of this exile? Daniel explains the purpose of the providence:—

"Till thou know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will" ( Daniel 4:25).

Yet there was something left in all this:—

"And whereas they commanded to leave the stump of the tree roots, thy kingdom shall be sure unto thee after that thou shalt have known that the heavens do rule" ( Daniel 4:26).

God does not make an utter end of us; he leaves a root, a stump, something that may yield a scion, something that may come to branch and leaf and fair flower or rich fruit What have we left? Reason, power of thinking, reflection, memory, power of forecast; we have our mother tongue left us, and we could put all its words into prayer; we could build our mother's words into a cathedral of praise. It is not quite night yet; the darkness is not yet outer darkness; there is time to get home before the night settles in black and endless dominion upon the earth: hasten to be wise; make the sunset hour a time of return; sanctify the evening by the sacrifice of obedience: in thy Father's house there is bread enough and to spare.

The providence was not lost upon Nebuchadnezzar. He bethought himself; he was brought back to the habitations of men, and when he saw the purpose of God and accepted it he uttered his testimony: he was not ashamed to declare what wonders had been wrought:—

"At the same time my reason returned unto me; and for the glory of my kingdom, mine honour and brightness returned unto me; and my counsellors and my lords sought unto me; and I was established in my kingdom, and excellent majesty was added unto me. Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise and extol and honour the King of heaven, all whose works are truth, and his ways judgment; and those that walk in pride he is able to abase" ( Daniel 4:36-37).

That is the testimony of history on both sides. Have we no testimony to bear? Is there no word we can speak on behalf of divine providence? If we are not theologians we can still observe the ways of God amongst men. We are not called upon to talk theology, but we are called upon to talk gratitude. Thankfulness is decency, and if we have received mercies of the Lord and never mentioned them, we are ungrateful, and we deserve no repetition of divine favours, and our deserts would lead to an abandonment of our life by the sunny and instructive providence of God. The testimony is always acceptable. Testimony may be argument. When a man cannot put into logical form his ideas of God he can still himself stand up and say, "Once I was blind; now I see." How were thine eyes opened? Hear the answer:—"A man that is called Jesus opened mine eyes." That is due to the Saviour of the world; if we said less we should surely be thankless, and unjust, and unworthy altogether. If the Church would be faithful in the deliverance of a simple, personal, definite testimony, who can say that the world would not be won to Christ? If on every hand unbelievers heard the testimony of belief, who knows but that a miracle would be wrought along the whole line of their thinking? But if unbelief is continually seeing in the Church doubt, denial, suspicion, suggestion of possible error or failure, what if unbelief should say, "Better be certain in unbelief, than uncertain and hesitant in 1 Corinthians 14:15, dreams, in which the understanding is asleep, are recognised indeed as a method of divine Genesis 20:3-7), Laban ( Genesis 31:24), of the chief butler and baker ( Genesis 40:5), of Pharaoh ( Genesis 41:1-8), of the Midianite ( Judges 7:13), of Nebuchadnezzar ( Daniel 2:1, etc.; Daniel 4:10-18), of the Magi ( Matthew 2:12), and of Pilate's wife ( Matthew 27:19). Many of these dreams, moreover, were symbolical and obscure, so as to require an interpreter. And where dreams are recorded as means of God's revelation to his chosen servants, they are almost always referred to the periods of their earliest and most imperfect knowledge of him. So it is in the case of Abraham ( Genesis 15:12, and perhaps Genesis 15:1-9), of Jacob ( Genesis 28:12-15), of Joseph ( Genesis 37:5-10), of Solomon ( 1 Kings 3:5), and, in the New Testament, of Joseph ( Matthew 1:20; Matthew 2:13, Matthew 2:19, Matthew 2:22). It is to be observed, moreover, that they belong especially to the earliest age, and become less frequent as the revelations of prophecy increase. The only exception to this is found in the dreams and "visions of the night" given to Daniel ( Daniel 2:19; Daniel 7:1), apparently in order to put to shame the falsehoods of the Chaldaean belief in prophetic dreams and in the power of interpretation, and yet to bring out the truth latent therein (comp. St. Paul's miracles at Ephesus, Acts 19:11-12, and their effect, Acts 19:18-20)."—Smith's Dictionary of the Bible.

Prayer

Almighty God, we have come out of the winter to praise thee for the spring; we have come from the wilderness into the garden of God; we have come from the field of battle to the home of peace. The world is one great fight all the week long; some win, some lose: but through all the action there is a tone of misery. The world is full of wailing; there is no happiness unmixed. We have left the plough in the furrow that we may come for a while to pray; we shall go back to the plough the stronger if thou wilt answer our heart's desire. All the work is standing still whilst we worship; blessed be thy name, we can say to our toil, Stand here while we go and worship yonder. We mean to take on the yoke again, and to resume all the fight, and to endure all the misery; but we can do all this better if we see God as it were face to face through Jesus Christ his Son. We want to pray, our hearts are full of desire, but in our mouth there are no words fit to tell all our pain and all our want; hear thou what little we can say, and answer it in the boundlessness of thy Fatherly love. We want to say how glad we are that we have not been forsaken; even in the night we have had stars to keep us company: it has not been all darkness; sometimes we thought we saw the dawn soon after midnight. Thou hast kept us, fed us, led us, and we are now in this green garden, this paradise of God, waiting to give thee praise and to see thy light. We want to tell thee how sad our heart is that we have done wrong; but wrong we are always doing: we are accustomed to do evil; we do it with the one hand as skilfully as with the other; we are practised in things forbidden. God be merciful unto us sinners, because our faces are hidden at the foot of the Cross. We look up for a moment to see the Sufferer; he is our Priest; he is doing our work; he will save us every one; our hope is in the dying, rising Christ. We come to him with fulness of love and fulness of trust, and if we know aught of distrust it is not in God, but in ourselves. Humble us, that we may be raised up, tread us deeply in the dust, that at last we may stand up before God elevated and sanctified by his grace. We want to give ourselves more perfectly to thee; to this end give us health, full, radiant, bounding health; may the blood run well, may the brain be strong, may every nerve respond to the fingers of the sun: and thus in great health of body may we entertain a healthy, loving soul; may the mind be a mind of health, loving the fresh air of God, and seeking only to nest itself in the very light of heaven. Take away from us all disease, all infirmity and imperfectness, every sign and token of death; may we trample grim old death in the dust to which he belongs. Thus do thou hear our cry. Thou knowest our meaning, though we cannot utter our words aright; thou dost not look at our words, but at our thought, the thing we would be at, the great desire, the master impulse. We give one another to thee in a great act of dedication; we would be born in God's house and wedded at God's altar, and we would live under God's roof: yea, we would dwell in the house of the Lord for ever, crying out our little miseries there, and there singing our little songs of joy, and there plighting and trothing one another in holy trust and generous hospitality. Help the bad man to overthrow the devil: turn aside the counsel of the mean of soul, so that their seed may never come to fruition; when they go out to seek the harvest may they cut down sheaves of darkness. Help the good man to be better; give him more light, more confidence: so often is goodness associated with timidity that thy people strike feebly when they might strike with a battering-ram. Help those who have to carry great burdens; say to them that at the most it is only for a handful of days, that there may be one or two moments of agony, but they are like the gates that fall back upon heaven. The Lord be in our sick-chamber and make it the brightest room in the house; the Lord be in the nursery and take care specially of the weakest child, and specially of him whose forecast in this world is very dark because he is lame, deformed, blind, incomplete, poor. The Lord be everywhere like the living air, a great ventilation, a great hope, a great impulse, a great inspiration. Lord, the little earth, so little, is still thine, though it is stained through and through with sin. Hear thou in heaven thy dwelling-place, and when thou hearest, Lord, forgive! Amen.