Daniel 4:1 Commentary and Bible Study

And this fourth chapter begins in an unusual way with an imperial decree issued by Nebuchadnezzar himself. He is going to be open and declare the experience that he has had, and the great humbling he has had by the most high God. He has been restored from his madness, obviously; and now he is accounting it. The news of it would have gone throughout the whole empire. It's clear that it lasted some considerable time, and the fact that he was mad and out in the open air for some while would have been known to all. So it has to be accounted for, and he is moved of God to come clean, and to account for it and to say exactly what has happened. Besides, it is a recent thing, so he still very afraid and disturbed in himself. We don't know exactly when this happened, but it must have been a long way into the reign of Nebuchadnezzar and towards the end of his life. He reigned from 605 to 562 BC. This was quite near the end of his reign; his life-long ambition, the building of Babylon, has been fulfilled (verse 30). Twenty-three years after his death, the empire fell to the Medes and Persians in 539 BC. But at this point, the king makes a full disclosure of everything that has happened to him. The country has been at peace for some time. All the conquering is over. He is absolutely victorious, and at his most powerful. He seems to have spent some time focusing on grand schemes, and particularly the development of this great city, great capital, Babylon, which is world famous. All excavations have uncovered nothing but those Nebuchadnezzar bricks, the great majority of which are stamped with his name. So he was self-obsessed in the extreme, and it was a magnificent project, but it is a polytheistic empire. The Jews are there, but they do not flourish; they only continue to exist. They have gone into captivity into various regions of the Babylonian Empire and they only continue to exist by the intervention of God, and we have seen an example of that already in the book. So what was the purpose at such a time, when all is at peace, and the emperor is at his most proud, in God sending this period of madness?It will help us to answer this question if we consider the history of Babylon as described in the Bible. In Genesis 11 we find the beginning of the Babylonian Empire: ‘And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. ² And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. ³ And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter. ⁴ And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth (Genesis 11:1-4).’ God intervened and there was the destruction of the Tower of Babel and the confusion of languages. It was the beginning of world empire, of the human race consolidating itself as much as possible, and trying to live independently of God, and pride reigning: great rulers, even tyranny. The greatest empire up to this point in the Book of Daniel is the Babylonian Empire. The we look at Isaiah 13, ‘The burden of Babylon, which Isaiah the son of Amoz did see … And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible.’ So God is going to deal with empire. Again in Isaiah 13:19-20: ‘And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. ²⁰ It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there. ²¹ But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there.’ In Isaiah 14:1 we read: ‘For the LORD will have mercy on Jacob, and will yet choose Israel,’ – the Babylonian captivity is predicted as coming to an end – ‘and set them in their own land: and the strangers shall be joined with them, and they shall cleave to the house of Jacob.’ Verse 4-6 of Isaiah 14: ‘That thou shalt take up this proverb against the king of Babylon, and say, How hath the oppressor ceased! the golden city ceased! ⁵ The LORD hath broken the staff of the wicked, and the sceptre of the rulers. ⁶ He who smote the people in wrath with a continual stroke, he that ruled the nations in anger, is persecuted, and none hindereth.’ Finally Revelation 18:1-8, ‘And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory. ² And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird. ³ For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies. ⁴ And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. ⁵ For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.’ Revelation 17 and 18 are all about the destruction of Babylon. Here in Daniel the Babylonian Empire at its height. Daniel is aged 45 to 55 and prime minister of the empire. It is to be destroyed in a matter of years and humbled and perish, and it will from that moment on, becoming in the Bible the symbol of the world. The literal world empire of Babylon will be a symbol of all worldliness and the world's rebellion against God. So the destruction of Babylon will be a prophecy, as it were, of the end of the world when all opposition to God will be brought to an end. This fourth chapter of Daniel must be seen in the light of that. Not long before the destruction of Babylon – at least seven years, because that is the gap between the death of Nebuchadnezzar and the fall of Babylon in 539 BC – Nebuchadnezzar himself receives this tremendous warning and discipline. It is quite astonishing. It comes right out of the blue. It is going to be a token of God's ultimate bringing to an end of all world power and opposition to God. But here in its historical context, it comes as a warning to Nebuchadnezzar. ‘Nebuchadnezzar the king unto all people, nations and languages’ – he is going to own up to this. He is going to be frank about his humbling. Does it mean he has had a tremendous change of heart? It may indicate that, and show his fear at God’s dealings with him, but he has got to explain his long period of madness. It is known throughout the empire, so he has got to give some account of what happened and come clean, and he does so in this decree. The whole thing is in the first person, except for the passage which describes the event of his madness. At that time he had lost his reason, and so that is in the third person. That is presumably narrated by Daniel. But then the king picks up in the first person again after that. So that's the structure of the passage.