Introduction
Daniel 2 is the first chapter in this book not written in Hebrew … it is written in Aramaic which was used as a lingua franca during this period.
And that is important.
Why?
Well the fact is you’ve got a chiastic structure in the book of Daniel here.
Chapter 2 highlights the start of, by switching into Aramaic and talking about these four kingdoms plus a fifth with is God’s Kingdom, and then at the end of that in chapter 8:1 the text goes back into Hebrew.
Here’s what that looks like:
This earlier part of the book of Daniel has a clear chiastic structure where …
- Chapter 2 is statue dream … about four kingdoms
- Chapter 3 is about three faithful Jews being challenged over faithfulness
- Chapter 4 is Nebuchadnezzar’s 2nd dream of a tree which is about God judging Nebuchadnezzar for his arrogance
- Chapter 5 is Belshazzar and the handwriting on the wall which is all about God’s judgement on a human King for their human arrogance
- Chapter 6 is about Daniel in the Lion’s Den, challenged over faithfulness
- Chapter 7 - Daniel has a vision of his own in which he sees 4 mutant beasts rising out of a tumultuous sea which is again about four kingdoms of mankind.
So, the chiastic counterpart of this chapter 2 of Daniel is chapter 7.
This chapter 2, then is all about what chapter 7 is about … the four violent and arrogant Kingdoms and God the Rock Who brings them down.
Now, the primary purpose of this chapter is NOT to showcase the fact that Daniel is better than the best of Babylon (great guy though he undoubtedly was) but to highlight the absolute supremacy of his God (here in this chapter in the area of knowledge and understanding, then in the next chapter in the area of His power).
So, in my view the best explanation is that the switch to Aramaic in Daniel 2:4 is a marker that we’re heading into this chiastic ‘panel’ in the book, which is book-ended by the prophecies of these four kingdoms plus one … before which and after which we’re in Hebrew.
So, Daniel 2 starts this section and indicates it by the switch of language.
And the book end sections here in chapter 2 and in chapter 7 focus our attention on God’s reign bringing to nought the arrogant presumption by brutal human rulers that THEY have all knowledge, understanding and power.
This chapter is really about God’s superior knowledge and eternal rule … His eternal Kingdom over against the wickedness and arrogance of human kings.
God is GREATER than these powerful rulers.
And it is here in Daniel 2 that, over against all the mass of Babylonian wisdom on display here, God is going to prove that He has superior knowledge AND IS THE SOURCE of knowledge.
This chapter is God’s superior knowledge manifested through those who trust in Him.
The next chapter is about God’s superior power, manifested through those who trust in Him.
So if you want to know the heart of this chapter, the point of it, you go to Daniel 2:27-28 “Daniel replied, “No wise man, enchanter, magician or diviner can explain to the king the mystery he has asked about, 28 but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries. He has shown King Nebuchadnezzar what will happen in days to come. Your dream and the visions that passed through your mind as you were lying in bed are these:”
Three themes keep coming clearly as we go through the chapter:
- The sovereignty of God
- The pride of human kings and rulers … arrogance characterises their actions
- The tension created for God’s faithful people by living in the service of a God Who is Sovereign while under the confusing earthly reign of a godless and arrogant human King … why did THAT happen?
… what a mystery!
And we’ll see those three themes that are set out in this chapter recurring throughout the rest of the book.
Here’s a foreign captive living in a pagan court, outshining the regular staff in that court as he interprets the dream the locals couldn’t interpret and doing it far better than the home team could even THINK of doing.
… but the key point in all of that is NOT about what Daniel is like, but about what Daniel’s GOD is like … as Daniel in v. 27 makes explicit:
““No wise man, enchanter, magician or diviner can explain to the king the mystery he has asked about, 28 but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries.”
There’s the challenge of this chapter for us.
Can we live confidently under shocking government and in confusing situations of all sorts that are simply a mystery to us
… because we serve a God with absolute knowledge and understanding and Who does actually, at the right time and in the right way, reveal mysteries.
1) Nebuchadnezzar’s inferior knowledge, vv. 1-11
Now the key to understanding what is going on here is to realise that Nebuchadnezzar is at this point a very new king.
He is in the very early years of his reign.
There is a sense that he doesn’t trust these enchanters and soothsayers very much yet. He therefore asks for something from them that is utterly unparalleled in Babylonian culture.
He needs to know if they are the genuine article or if they are stringing him along
… the deal seems to have been that he tells them a dream, they come up with some reassuring or heart-warming garbage, and …
No says Nebuchadnezzar.
He is not up for that.
His word is ‘firm’, certain or definite, he says in v. 5.
They have got to tell him what the dream was and then he will feel reassured that the interpretation they go on to offer is a reliable one.
And if they don’t, he says, he will cut them in pieces.
They have every reason to believe him.
Now that is NOT how these guys worked, had ever worked or ever COULD work.
This is beyond the scope of their competence … which is the point.
How’s that?
There’s a lot in the ancient texts to show that these guys had two sorts of things they studied to be able to predict the future.
One was in observable material phenomena … looking at things that happened in the stars and planets, freak weather events, finding particular phenomena in the entrails of animals etc. and they had volumes and volumes of literature to look up to tell them that in the past something or other they saw in the entrails of a rabbit or whatever meant such-and-such was going to happen.
They studied all these books … it was like science to them … this was all their wisdom and learning.
So when they themselves wanted to know about something they’d go and cut up a rabbit (other animals were available) get their dad and go and consult their books.
This was their highest level of science and proof but they also had a
lower level which was significant-seeming dreams but those were notoriously tricky to pin down and when they thought they had worked out what a dream might be about they’d go and
cut up some poor unsuspecting animal or
take some astronomical observations
to confirm things before they placed any decent level of confidence against the interpretation of the dream … or just wrote it off as just having too much cheese late in the evening.
They needed to be told the dream, therefore to take along to their ‘scientific’ process as that was the whole basis on which their system worked and without it they had nothing to give.
Nebuchadnezzar’s request for the interpretation WITHOUT the dream is completely unprecedented in the Babylonian literature.
So, they go back and back to Nebuchadnezzar in verses 4 & 7, and then take him head on in verses 10-11 to say he is being utterly impossible (quite a risk but they are being put in a place that for them is quite desperate anyway)
Hear this:
“The astrologers answered the king, “There is no one on earth who can do what the king asks! No king, however great and mighty, has ever asked such a thing of any magician or enchanter or astrologer.
11 What the king asks is too difficult.
No one can reveal it to the king except the gods, and they do not live among humans.”
Now THERE is the thing.
Because Daniel’s God does just that.
So WHAT does that say about the focus of young Daniel’s devotion?
There lies the very HEART of what this book is telling us in this chapter.
The God of the Bible does reveal what are mysteries to even the best of Babylon, and is to be TRUSTED, to be relied upon as God because He does so!
And THERE is the full-throated admission of the impotence of human wisdom and understanding in this fallen and often confusing world … before God, for you!
Daniel and his friends were dealing with the confusion caused by the tension between their faith that God was Sovereign and their experience as captives in brutal Babylon.
That hard, conflicted experience was mitigated by their knowledge NOT of the so-called learned books of the Babylonians but by their knowledge of the person of the One True Living God …
- Who reveals mysteries and
2. upon whom they rely.
But human understanding has nothing to offer in the darkness of human uncertainty.
That is the KEY issue that Daniel 2 is addressing for us.
Humanity is in this position … in their secular, scientific sort of mind set they say:
- 11 “What the king asks is too difficult.
No one can reveal it to the king except the gods,
and they do not live among humans.”
but there is a God.
Daniel’s God.
… let’s not jump the gun.
These guys were Babylon’s best.
But when challenged by the king for knowledge they had nothing.
And when the king is thwarted by the limitations on the human knowledge and human wisdom that he is able to muster … the immature and far too over-promoted young king blows up in some style.
And he does so in sheer contrast with Daniel who in the teeth of the King’s threats against the Babylonian wise guys (which apply to Daniel and his friends too) keeps his calm PERFECTLY.
2) Nebuchadnezzar’s reaction to his inferior knowledge? Vv. 12-16
Daniel is not remotely panicked by the widespread slaughter of the people around him as the King’s wrath starts getting worked out.
He gets hold of Arioch, the King’s hatchet man, and asks what this is all about.
Arioch explains and Daniel does a bit of an Esther by boldly going in to the king for a quiet word.
Now, bear in mind, Daniel wasn’t allowed to stand before the king until he’d had three years of training in this wisdom of the Babylonians … all the divination stuff in their books about stars and animal entrails … and he’d only had two, but Daniel trusts in the sovereignty of the God Who reveals mysteries more than he fears the wrath of the irascible King of Babylon so (v. 16)
“At this, Daniel went in to the king and asked for time, so that he might interpret the dream for him.”
That extra time had been refused to the fully fledged cream of Nebuchadnezzar’s wise men crop … we don’t know why but Daniel gets the extra time.
What we realise here is that the Babylonian ‘experts’ have just got the books of empirical data produced over hundreds of years of study and that’s simply inadequate, but that Daniel is a person of the presence of God.
And here we see him exercising the wisdom and the calm born of simple faith that His God is the God Who reveals mysteries.
That’s faith in the One True LIVING God, for you.
But that’s the thing you see.
What we are seeing here is more than wisdom and discernment, we’re seeing the evidence of God at work in Daniel’s doings.
- Why did Arioch the executioner who’d come to kill him listen to Daniel instead?
- How did Daniel gain access to the King?
- If the King was so raging mad how did Daniel get his extra time?
There is a ton of stuff in this section we’re not told.
Of all the spoken words that could have been reported here and that would have filled in so much of the background for us there’s only ONE bit of direct conversation reported and that’s where Daniel asks Arioch the executioner:
- 15 “Why did the king issue such a harsh decree?” Arioch then explained the matter to Daniel.”
Daniel is the key operator here … the only one allowed to speak, he is the wise one, the calm one.
He is living in the tension between the Sovereignty of God and the threat of living under a brutal human ruler.
So Daniel has enough questions of his own, but what we see here is Daniel stepping aside of all his confusion to act in the confidence that His God is the One Who reveals mysteries.
ACTING in that confidence.
It is confidence, very importantly, in the God he KNOWS.
He is the God Who reveals mysteries.
So now Daniel - and he gets his mates involved in it – takes it to that God in prayer.
3) Daniel goes to God, vv. 17-23
Do you see what Daniel says to God here to get the Lord to intervene?
What do we discover about the essential elements of urgent prayer when the world is just WILD, in these verses?
You might be tempted to say ‘nothing’!
We are NOT told the CONTENT of his prayer.
What we are told is the spirit in which he prayed.
Key concepts to describe what we know of the spirit in which he prayed might be calm, confident and corporate.
But on the other hand, we are told what constitutes the content of Daniel’s thanksgiving afterwards …
Key themes in this great doxology in vv. 20-23 that follows the Lord revealing the content and the meaning of the dream, as God reveals this particular high-tension mystery would be … well let’s just listen to it:
““Praise be to the name of God for ever and ever;
wisdom and power are his.
21 He changes times and seasons;
he deposes kings and raises up others.
(Yes … that’s what the dream had been about! The four Kingdoms of Men and the one of The Rock!)
Daniel praises on:
He gives wisdom to the wise
and knowledge to the discerning.
22 He reveals deep and hidden things;
he knows what lies in darkness,
and light dwells with him.
23 I thank and praise you, God of my ancestors:
You have given me wisdom and power,
you have made known to me what we asked of you,
you have made known to us the dream of the king.”
God’s sovereignty, right to rule, eternal Kingdom, that He raises mere human kings up and brings them down, and He reveals deep and hidden knowledge …
A lot of the themes in this doxology are the themes not just of this chapter but of this book.
The dream is about God raising Kings and taking them down, so it’s about God having done what He does and revealed this mystery …
4) Daniel goes to Nebuchadnezzar with an unexpected message, vv. 24-30
Here in these verses now is the climax of the chapter - this resolves the tensions in the confusing and frightening situation:
Telling and interpreting the dream means the death threat against Daniel and his friends is removed and it also solves the tension of the King not knowing what the dream meant.
So this section is the climax and the resolution.
Daniel goes to Arioch who takes Daniel in to see the King again and Arioch is obviously convinced already that Daniel’s cracked it because he promptly tries to take the credit for it all!
Anyway, v. 26 king asks Daniel if he can come up with the cookies and Daniel is not going to get straight to delivering cookies but makes very sure he takes the time to make God look good in the whole matter:
Vv. 27-28 “Daniel replied, “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 days to come.
Your dream and the visions that passed through your mind as you were lying in bed are these …”
What goes on here?
- Daniel affirms the things the Babylonian wise men had said about the King asking the impossible of humans, but also that there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries
… ‘my God does the impossible’, is Daniel’s first point.
And then
- Daniel’s second point is that this interpretation does not come about because of anything special about Daniel … Daniel gives God ALL the glory:
Vv. 29-30:
“As Your Majesty was lying there, your mind turned to things to come, and the revealer of mysteries showed you what is going to happen.
30 As for me, this mystery has been revealed to me,
not because I have greater wisdom than anyone else alive,
but so that Your Majesty may know the interpretation and that you may understand what went through your mind.”
Under temporary stay of execution, Daniel is OBVIOUSLY in no hurry here!
He is NOT rushing into the King’s presence and saying ‘I’ve got it, I’ve got it, it means THIS!’
No.
Daniel sees that it is NOT telling the dream that is the important thing here, but that Nebuchadnezzar should be almost compelled to acknowledge that Daniel’s God has the power because he really DOES know everything …
and it is Daniel’s GOD Who reveals knowledge.
Only eventually does Daniel get to telling what the dream was about.
The dream, Daniel perceives, is not the big point God wants to make.
The big issue to get across to the King is
- Who God is, and
- the difference He makes in situations of painful and terrible ‘not knowing’
- to the people who know and put their trust in Him.
5) Daniel goes to Nebuchadnezzar with an unexpected assertion: the four Kings and the Stone, vv. 31-45
The interpretation of the kingdoms and the business of trying to pry into identifying them with kingdoms in past history has attracted much attention and caused the spilling of much ink … but that is really not the point here.
The golden head is identified for us as Nebuchadnezzar, and the Stone is the Kingdom of God but beyond that lies speculation.
No, the dream is about the theme of the doxology
… that God raises kings up and takes them down,
… that He is Sovereign and
… despite the ruthlessness and violence of the Kingdoms of men and the behaviour of their rulers … they are all in His hand.
More than that belongs to the day we look at chapters 7 and 8 … where it starts to become apparent that there’s actually something literary going on with these four kingdoms and the speculation about who and what they identify with in history is to misunderstand their point.
Conclusion
In vv. 46-49 the chapter winds up with Nebuchadnezzar summarising verbally the message we’re supposed to get out of the chapter:
“Then King Nebuchadnezzar fell prostrate before Daniel and paid him honour and ordered that an offering and incense be presented to him
.47 The king said to Daniel, “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.”
48 Then the king placed Daniel in a high position and lavished many gifts on him. He made him ruler over the entire province of Babylon and placed him in charge of all its wise men.
49 Moreover, at Daniel’s request the king appointed Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego administrators over the province of Babylon, while Daniel himself remained at the royal court.”
Daniel gets recognised as a genuine representative of Daniel’s God.
There’s a massive message here for God’s people under pressure everywhere struggling to stay faithful through the apparent contradiction between their current hard experience and God’s sovereignty.
Look: when God does God stuff and reveals mysteries displaying superior knowledge to anything Babylon has come across, Nebuchadnezzar here actually bows down, paying homage before the foreign and captive servant of this apparently defeated God (they have been taken captive from defeated Israel to Babylon as captives)
… the APPARENTLY but not ACTUALLY defeated God Who in fact is all wise, knows everything and reveals relevant mysteries to His faithful people.
How ENCOURAGED must Daniel and his mates themselves have been that God breaks through mysteries and that He, the Rock, brings up and puts down the seemingly powerful human authorities that cause them so much pain and trouble.
The question for us is how we are to live in this troubled and troubling world where the enemies of God cause us such pain and confusion …
More explicitly how do we live here as followers of the Sovereign God Who reveals mysteries?
- If we trust Him to be Sovereign and to take care of and to reveal the things we just DON’T understand … often not at our leisure but in the nick of time as here where Arioch the executioner had already arrived at the door … how calm, confident and controlled will that teach us to be?
- And what impact will that have on the way we handle the things that today confuse us?
The key to developing such an automatic pattern of response, such a disposition, lies in laying hold of, grasping and feeding our souls BEFORE the day of calamity on the characteristics and character of God
… the character and characteristics that you’ll find in Daniel’s description of the God Who reveals mysteries and in His doxology in this chapter.
And the key to it is living as people who by basic and automatic disposition live life as RELIANCE on and TRUST in the God Who reveals the things we can’t understand,
and is to be trusted until in His good time He does
… because all the while He is the One with superior knowledge and (as we’re going to see in chapter 3) superior power.
