Daniel 4:2 Commentary and Bible Study

This is Nebuchadnezzar’s message to the empire about God’s personal dealings with him, which are about to be recounted in this chapter. It is written to glorify God. It is his acknowledgement that God reigns regardless of what human kings may rise and fall: the God who never dies. He starts with praise to God. He praises God even though he condemns himself in the process, for the signs and wonders he is about to relate were the very means that God used to humble him, to bring him to acknowledge his pride and God’s sovereignty over his life. He abases himself in order to exalt God. He has not the least doubt that this intervention in his life is from the God of Israel, the high God, or literally, the most high God. God does signs and wonders in the earth, and in the lives of men, and by this his life has been turned around. There is no exaggeration here; he speaks of what he has experienced and knows is true. He knows how carried away he was with his own ambition and achievements, and how hard it was for him to be brought to a different frame of mind. But God did it, and he did it out in the open for all to see. Verse 3 uses language which echoes the language of the psalms: ‘Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and thy dominion endureth throughout all generations’ (Psalm 145:13). Either he used Hebrew Scripture himself, or Daniel, a man of God, suggested these words to him. Up till this time he had not been prepared to do this. He had kept on worshipping his own gods, whatever good he had said about God. But these words also point back to the words of Daniel when he interpreted Nebuchadnezzar’s dream: ‘And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed’ (Daniel 2:44). At the time the king had first heard those words, he was deeply impressed by them and rewarded Daniel and acknowledged the superior power of Daniel’s God (Daniel 2:47). But since that time he has forgotten the reverence he felt so deeply for the God of Daniel, and he has been lifted up with pride, and threatened death to those who would not worship his image, and boasted in his heart of all he has done, without giving praise to the most high God. The humbling of his heart through God’s discipline of him in this chapter takes him back to these words of Daniel again, and now he has a much deeper respect for them. He can see that his life is in God’s hand, and he believes the dream again: that the future is as it was revealed in the dream, and God will setup a kingdom greater than all the passing kingdoms and empires of the earth. God has brought to his mind again truths which had slipped from him, and he sees the glory of God’s works in the earth.