Daniel: Far From HomeSample

Verses 28 to 30 tell of the king’s response to the dream, its interpretation and the application from Daniel. We learn that in the year that followed the king hadn’t listened and had failed to humble himself before God. As he struts about on the roof of his royal palace, surveying his achievements, the use of the personal pronoun is striking. Despite being repeatedly told that his rule is a gift from God, he still thinks that what he has are his achievements. The king is like so many today.

In verses 31 to 33 we read how the dream the king had was fulfilled. The heavenly messenger repeats the judgement that the king had been told in the dream. And what heaven speaks is what happens (v. 33). The king of the nation that ruled the world is now like a bird. We are not meant to miss the reversal. In his dream Nebuchadnezzar was like a tree that gave sanctuary to birds. Now he has become like one of those birds.

The effect of this judgement from God is the conversion of the king. In verse 34, instead of looking down on what he has achieved, he now looks up to heaven. Humbled by God, he now sees things correctly. He sees his place before the Most High. And it leads the king to a hymn of praise in verses 34 and 35. He now acknowledges the sovereign and eternal God.

C.S. Lewis describes the night he came to the same realization.

You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.*

The king’s submission to God as the true king is a shadow of the response that all are called to make before King Jesus. As the king submitted to God, his sanity was restored, and now his kingdom is restored too. The last line of the chapter is a summary: ‘…those who walk in pride he is able to humble.’ Jesus taught the same (see Luke 18:14).

Reflection

Why do you think it was so hard for Nebuchadnezzar to humble himself before the Lord? Why is it hard for people today to do the same?

* Surprised by Joy (London: HarperCollins, 2002).