Daniel 2:5 Commentary and Bible Study

If the Chaldeans expected Nebuchadnezzar to now lay before them his dream, they are in for a shock. He wanted someone better, someone with such a grasp that they could figure out his dream without him even telling them what it was about. They know they cannot do that. The king reasons that if they can know what he dreamed without him telling them – the harder thing – they will genuinely be able to interpret the dream and he can trust their interpretation as true. ‘The thing is gone from me’ – what is gone from him? Does he mean the dream is gone from him in the sense that it has slipped his mind; he can no long remember it and so he cannot tell them what it was. Or does he mean the edict or decree is gone from his mouth, the stern word that he is about to utter: ‘if ye will not make known unto me the dream, with the interpretation thereof, ye shall be cut in pieces, and your houses shall be made a dunghill’? To say that that has gone from him is to say that he is not going to change his mind and his will is inflexible on the matter. The latter interpretation of these words is consistent with the fierceness with which he speaks here and in verse 9, where the word ‘decree’ is used. It is unlikely that he has forgotten a dream which had such a profound effect upon him. When Daniel interprets it, Nebuchadnezzar recognises immediately that Daniel has spoken the truth. How would knowing what the dream was without being told be a good test of their genuine ability to interpret, if he could not remember what he had dreamed? The harshness of this decree shows how greatly the dream had affected the king and how frightened he was: he was desperate to receive an interpretation. This dream was of divine origin he knew, and yet God had not revealed its meaning to him. It was of the utmost importance that he know the interpretation, for the revelation of God to him – and he knew this was a divine revelation – was incomplete without it. It also shows how suspicious he is of the Chaldeans. He sees through their bluster and he doesn’t trust them. He had dealt with them enough to know that how slippery they were. They were skilled at giving ambiguous answers that could be twisted to mean whatever they wanted them to mean. They claimed to have knowledge of dark things but they concealed their ignorance under a heap of nice sounding words. Although Nebuchadnezzar often went along with this sham for the sake of stability in the empire, he was not going to do this time. The king is a despot; he is a tyrant; but equally, those wise men, those astrologers, were immensely arrogant and superior in their bearing, and the king knew them, and he becomes very cynical about them, and he believed that they would concoct an interpretation among themselves, but really not have any claim to knowledge of what was intended in this dream. He therefore tests them by getting them to prove their powers. They must first divine what he does know and can verify, before they tell him the meaning of the dream which he does not know. Only then will he trust what they say. But they think this is most unreasonable.