Daniel 4:35

These verses are the end of a story the king tells in his own words. He dreamed of a great tree cut down to its stump (Daniel 4:10–17), and Daniel told him that the dream was about him. He would be driven from men to live like a beast for “seven times”, until he knew that “the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men” (Daniel 4:25). Then the king boasted, “Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty?” and the judgment fell on him just as Daniel had said (Daniel 4:28–33).

Nebuchadnezzar ruled Babylon from 605 to 562 BC and was the most powerful king of his age. He conquered and destroyed Jerusalem, carried the people of Judah into exile, and filled Babylon with great buildings. The kings of the nations were often treated as gods or as the chosen of the gods, so his boast set him up against the one true God. His humbling showed a world of many gods that the God of Israel rules, and that all power belongs to him.

“At the end of the days” means the end of the time God had set, the “seven times” of the dream, often reckoned as seven years. The king’s first act is to lift up his eyes unto heaven. A man who had looked at his own works and called them his glory now looks up to the God above him, and the gesture owns a power higher than his own. Then “mine understanding returned unto me.” The word is mandaʻ, which means wisdom, intelligence or reason. The look upward comes first, and his understanding comes back with it. What returned was his sanity, and with it a clear grasp of the truth his pride had refused, that God rules over him.

The first use he makes of his restored mind is worship. “Blessed” is bᵉrak, a verb that means to kneel and so, by implication, to bless God in adoration. The king who had exalted himself bows before God, and then he praises and honours him. He gives God two titles. “The most High” sets him above every king and every god, and “him that liveth for ever” sets him against the mortal kings of the earth, Nebuchadnezzar among them.

The heart of the king’s confession is the last line of verse 34: “whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom is from generation to generation.” The word for dominion, sholṭân, means empire, power or authority. “Dominion” comes twice in the verse, the second time with “everlasting” beside it. Nebuchadnezzar’s empire was his for a time, while God’s rule lasts for ever and holds over every generation in turn. This is the very lesson the dream was sent to teach, and the king now says it in his own words.

Daniel had already told this king, when he interpreted his first dream, that God rules over the times and over every ruler (Daniel 2:21). Later in the book Daniel’s visions set the passing empires of the earth beside the kingdom of God (Daniel 7), and there the dominion of the Son of man is “an everlasting dominion” that “shall not be destroyed” (Daniel 7:14). The words a Babylonian king spoke of the Most High are spoken there of the reign of Christ. A psalm sings of the same dominion of the LORD over all (Psalm 103:19), and Revelation looks to the day when the kingdom of the world becomes God’s (Revelation 11:15).

Verse 35 carries the confession on: “And all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing.” The verb chăshab means to regard or to reckon. Measured against God, the people of the earth, with all their strength and achievements, are powerless to resist his plan. Isaiah says the same of the nations, which are to God as a drop from a bucket (Isaiah 40:15). It is a hard sentence for a king who had reckoned himself great, and it is the cure for his pride.

“He doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth.” The word for will, tsᵉbâʼ, means what pleases him, so God carries out what he purposes. A psalm says of him that he is in the heavens and does whatever he pleases (Psalm 115:3). The two halves of the line take in all there is, the hosts of heaven above and the peoples of the earth below, and God’s will is done in both.

“None can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?” The word for hand, yad, also stands for power, means and direction. “Stay” translates mᵉchâʼ, to strike in pieces or to arrest, so to stay his hand would be to hold it back or strike against it, and none can. “What doest thou?” is the question of someone who demands an account, and God answers to none of his creatures. What he does rests on his perfect wisdom and righteousness. Paul asks the same of anyone who would answer back to God (Romans 9:20).

“At the same time my reason returned unto me.” At the moment the king praised God, his mind came back. “Reason” is mandaʻ, the same word as “understanding” in verse 34, and it matches the Hebrew maddaʻ, knowledge. His full powers of mind returned, the judgment and planning a king needs in order to govern.

“Returned unto me” stands twice in this verse, first for his reason and then for his honour and brightness. The verb is tûwb, which matches the Hebrew shuv, to come back or to restore. What the judgment had taken away came back to him by God’s hand.

“Honour” is hădar, magnificence or dignity. “Brightness” is zîyv, a word for the countenance or for cheerfulness, so it is the bright face and royal bearing he had lost in his humiliation. He says these returned “for the glory of my kingdom”, because the king’s recovery restored the kingdom’s standing and stability as well.

“My counsellors and my lords sought unto me.” The men of his court came looking for him and accepted his rule again. In a land where a king’s authority rested on his sound mind and on being seen to have heaven’s favour, this public return mattered as much as his public fall.

“I was established in my kingdom.” The verb tᵉqan means to straighten up or to confirm, and here it means he was made firm and secure on his throne after all the disorder. Then “excellent majesty was added unto me.” The words are yattîyr, preeminent, and rᵉbûw, greatness. God gave him greater majesty than he had before, and he gave it to a king who now knew who gives kingdoms.

Every word Daniel had spoken came true, the humbling and the restoring alike, and the king’s return to his throne bears witness that God’s word is reliable. The Most High “ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will” (Daniel 4:17), and he gave this kingdom back. “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18), and Nebuchadnezzar had fallen. James and Peter tell the rest. God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble (James 4:6), and he lifts up those who humble themselves under his mighty hand (1 Peter 5:6). The same truth runs through the whole book, from the king’s dream of the great statue (Daniel 2) to the fall of Babylon (Daniel 5).

“Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise and extol and honour the King of heaven.” “Now”, kᵉʻan, marks the change in him. Three verbs follow one after another: shᵉbach, to praise, adulate or adore, rûwm, to extol, and hădar, to honour. The king who once glorified himself and the gods of Babylon gives all the glory to God. “King of heaven” names a King above Nebuchadnezzar’s own throne, ruling the kingdoms of the earth and the heavens alike, with every power in heaven and on earth beneath him.

“All whose works are truth, and his ways judgment.” The word for truth, qᵉshôwṭ, speaks of what is reliable and faithful, free of deceit or error. His “ways” (ʼôrach) are his dealings with people, and they are “judgment” (dîyn), just and right. The two halves match, works with ways and truth with judgment. The king says this of the God who had just humbled him, so he counts even that hard discipline as just. God’s rule rests on his perfect righteousness, even when it brings a king as low as the beasts.

Nebuchadnezzar’s confession points ahead to the kingdom of Jesus Christ. The Most High who rules in the kingdom of men is the Father, who has given all authority to the Son. Jesus said, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth” (Matthew 28:18), and the risen Christ is “far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come” (Ephesians 1:21). He is King of kings and Lord of lords (Revelation 19:16), and he upholds all things by the word of his power (Hebrews 1:3). So the army of heaven and the inhabitants of the earth are under his hand, and none can stay it. His will is a saving will, which reconciles all things to God through the cross (Colossians 1:19–20).

The two kings also stand in contrast. Nebuchadnezzar was brought low by God because of his pride. Christ, the King of glory, chose to humble himself: he “made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men” (Philippians 2:7). He who had the power to abase the proud let himself be abased, going to death on a cross as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). Then God highly exalted him and gave him a name which is above every name (Philippians 2:8–11).

The words of verse 37 fit him too. The eternal Word, by whom all things were made (John 1:1–3), is the true King of heaven, and his works are truth, for he said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). His ways are judgment, because at the cross he upheld God’s righteousness and made atonement. And as Nebuchadnezzar’s reason came back to him, Christ gives understanding to people lost in the madness of sin. He delivers them from darkness into his kingdom (Colossians 1:13) and makes them heirs together with him (Romans 8:17), so that like the king they receive a greater glory than the one they lost.

These verses give us a God whose rule is everlasting and who holds every power in heaven and on earth. In a world shaken by trouble, and in the trials of our own lives, his kingdom stands from generation to generation, an anchor that holds. His works are truth and his ways are just, so even his discipline has a purpose, and here its purpose was to bring a proud man to know him.

They also give us a God whose grace reached the proudest king on earth. He brought Nebuchadnezzar low, and when the king lifted his eyes to heaven, God gave him back his mind, his honour and his throne, with more besides. Everything we have, our gifts, our work and our very breath, comes from his hand, and every authority on earth is held from him and answers to him. The king’s own last word stands over all of it, “those that walk in pride he is able to abase”, and the God who abases the proud lifts up the humble.