Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Daniel 4:6
Therefore made I a decree to bring in all the wise [men] of Babylon before me, that they might make known unto me the interpretation of the dream.
6. The ‘wise men’ of Babylon (Dan 2:12) were summoned before the king, as on the occasion of his previous dream (Dan 2:2).
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Therefore made I a decree – The word here rendered decree ( teem) means, commonly, taste, flavor, as of wine; then judgment, discernment, reason; and then a judgment of a king, a mandate, edict. Compare Dan 3:10. The primary notion seems to be that of a delicate taste enabling one to determine the qualities of wines, viands, etc.; and then a delicate and nice discrimination in regard to the qualities of actions. The word thus expresses a sound and accurate judgment, and is applied to a decree or edict, as declared by one who had the qualifications to express such a judgment. Here it means, that he issued a royal order to summon into his presence all who could be supposed to be qualified to explain the dream. The Greek (Codex Chisianus) omits Dan 4:6-9.
To bring in all the wise men … – Particularly such as are enumerated in the following verse. Compare Dan 2:12. It was in accordance with his habit thus to call in the wise men who were retained at court to give counsel, and to explain those things which seemed to be an intimation of the Divine will. See the note at Dan 2:2. Compare also Gen 41:8.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Though he had experienced before that these wise men were fooled, and could do nothing either in telling or interpreting his dream, Da 2, yet he will try them once again, possibly because they might gain fresh credit with the king; or he would hear what they could do, and if they failed him, he would then make use of Daniel whom he had in reserve. Perhaps these Chaldean doctors and wizards shunned and scorned Daniels company, and he was as much shy of theirs; therefore they came not together; but God had disposed of this whole scene, and, for the honour of his name, suffered Daniel not to be sent for till the last.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
6. It may seem strange thatDaniel was not first summoned. But it was ordered by God’s providencethat he should be reserved to the last, in order that all mere humanmeans should be proved vain, before God manifested His power throughHis servant; thus the haughty king was stripped of all fleshlyconfidences. The Chaldees were the king’s recognized interpreters ofdreams; whereas Daniel’s interpretation of the one in Da2:24-45 had been a peculiar case, and very many years before; norhad he been consulted on such matters since.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Therefore made I a decree,…. Published a proclamation; signifying it was his mind and will
to bring in all the wise men of Babylon before him; all together, supposing that one or other of them, or by consulting together, would be able to explain things to his satisfaction, and make him more easy:
that they might make known unto me the interpretation of the dream; for though they could not tell the interpretation of his former dream, because he could not relate to them the dream itself; which, if he could, they promised him the interpretation; but now he could remember it, and therefore might expect they would make known the interpretation of it to him.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
(4:3-6)
Therefore Nebuchadnezzar commanded the wise men of Babylon (Dan 2:2) to be called to him, that they might interpret to him the dream. But they could not do so, although on this occasion he only asked them to give the interpretation, and not, as in Dan 2:2, at the same time the dream itself. Instead of the Kethiv , the Keri here and at Dan 5:8 gives the contracted form , which became possible only by the shortening of , as in Dan 3:16. The form is differently explained; apparently it must be the plur. masc. instead of , and , to the last, a circumlocution of the adverb at last. That means posterus, and alius, Hitzig has not yet furnished the proof. The question, wherefore Daniel came only when the Chaldean wise men could not interpret the dream, is not answered satisfactorily by the remark of Zndel, p. 16, that it was the natural course that first they should be called who by virtue of their wisdom should interpret the dream, and that then, after their wisdom had failed, Daniel should be called, who had gained for himself a name by revelations not proceeding from the class of the Magi. For if Nebuchadnezzar had still the events of Daniel 2 in view, he would without doubt have called him forthwith, since it certainly did not come into his mind, in his anxiety on account of his dream, first to try the natural wisdom of his Magi. The objection offered by Hitzig, that the king does not go at once to his chief magician, v. 6 (Dan 4:9), who had already (Daniel 2) shown himself to be the best interpreter of dreams, is not thereby confuted; still less is it by the answer that the custom was not immediately to call the president of the Magi (Jahn), or that in the haste he was not at once thought of (Hv.). Though it may have been the custom not to call the chief president in every particular case, yet a dream by the king, which had filled him with terror, was an altogether unusual occurrence. If Daniel, therefore, was in this case first called only when the natural wisdom of the Magi had proved its inadequacy, the reason of this was, either that Nebuchadnezzar had forgotten what had occurred several years before (Daniel 2), and since the chief president of the wise men was only in special cases called on for counsel, therefore only the incorporated cultivators of the magician’s art were called, and only when these could not accomplish that which was asked of them was the chief president Daniel required to come, – or it lay in this, that the king, afraid of receiving an unwelcome answer, purposely adopted the course indicated. Kranichfeld has decided in favour of this latter supposition. “ The king,” he thinks, “knew from the dream itself that the tree (v. 8 [Dan 4:11]) reaching unto heaven and extending to the end of the whole earth represented a royal person ruling the earth, who could come to ruin on account of the God of the Jews, and would remain in his ruin till there was an acknowledgment of the Almighty; cf. vv. 13, 14, (Dan 4:16, Dan 4:17). There was this reason for the king’s keeping Daniel the Jew at a distance from this matter of the dream. Without doubt he would think himself intended by the person concerned in the dream; and since the special direction which the dream took (Dan 4:14) set forth as its natural point of departure an actual relation corresponding to that of the king to the God of Daniel, it must have occasioned to him a well-grounded fear (cf. Dan 4:24), as in the case of Ahab, the idolater, towards Micah, the prophet of Jehovah (cf. 1Ki 22:8), of a severe judgment, leading him to treat with any other regarding his matter rather than with Daniel.” For the establishment of this view Kranichfeld refers to the “king’s subsequent address to Daniel, designed especially to appease and captivate (vv. 5, 6 [Dan 4:8, Dan 4:9]), as well as the visibly mild and gentle deportment of the king toward the worshipper of the God of the Jews.” This proceeding tending to captivate appears in the appellation, Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar, according to the name of my god; for Nebuchadnezzar, by the addition of a name of honour in commemoration of the celebrated god of the kingdom, intended to show favour toward him, as also in the expression which follows, In whom is the spirit of the holy gods, which Nebuchadnezzar repeats in the address. But neither in the one nor the other of these considerations can we perceive the intention of specially captivating and appeasing the Jew Daniel; – not in the latter of these expressions, for two reasons: 1. because Nebuchadnezzar uses the expression not merely in the address to Daniel, but also in the references to him which go before; had he designed it to captivate him, he would have used these words of honour only in the address to him; 2. because the expression, “in whom is the spirit of the holy gods,” is so truly heathenish, that the Jew, who knew only one God, could not feel himself specially flattered by having the spirit of the holy gods ascribed to him.
If Nebuchadnezzar had had the intention of gaining the favour of Daniel, he would certainly, according to his confession (Dan 2:47), have attributed to him the spirit of the God of gods, the Lord of lords, – a confession which even as a heathen he could utter. We cannot give the king so little credit for understanding as to suppose that he meant to show
(Note: Calvin here rightly remarks: non dubium est, quin hoc nomen graviter vulneraverit animum prophetae .)
a special favour to Daniel, who held so firmly the confession of his father’s God, by reminding him that he had given him the name Belteshazzar after the name of his god Bel, whom the Jews abhorred as an idol. Thus the reminding him of this name, as well as the saying that he possessed the spirit of the holy gods, is not accounted for by supposing that he intended to appease and captivate Daniel. In showing the unsatisfactoriness of this interpretation of these expressions, we have set aside also the explanation of the reason, which is based upon it, why Daniel was called in to the king only after the Chaldean wise men; and other weighty considerations can also be adduced against it. First, the edict contains certainly nothing which can give room to the conjecture that Nebuchadnezzar entertained no true confidence, but much rather want of confidence, in him. The comparison of Nebuchadnezzar also with king Ahab in his conduct toward the prophet Micah is not suitable, because Ahab was not a mere polytheist as Nebuchadnezzar, but much rather, like Antiochus Epiphanes, persecuted the servants of Jehovah in his kingdom, and at the instigation of his heathenish wife Jezebel wished to make the worship of Baal the only religion of his kingdom. Finally, the relation of the dream does not indicate that Nebuchadnezzar, if he knew or suspected that the dream referred to himself as ruler over the whole earth, thought that he would come to ruin because of the God of the Jews. For that this does not follow from v. 14 (Dan 4:17), is shown not only by the divine visitation that happened to the king, as mentioned in v. 27 (Dan 4:30) in fulfilment of the dream, but also by the exhortation to the king with which Daniel closes the interpretation, “to break off sin by righteousness, and his iniquities by showing mercy to the poor” (v. 24 [v. 27]).
Thus there only remains this supposition, that the former revelations of God to the king had passed away from his heart and his memory; which was not surprising in the successful founder and ruler of a world-kingdom, if we consider that from twenty-five to thirty years must have passed away since Daniel interpreted to him his dream in the second year of his reign, and from ten to fifteen had passed since the miracle of the deliverance of the three from the burning fiery furnace. But if those earlier revelations of God were obscured in his heart by the fulness of his prosperity, and for ten years Daniel had no occasion to show himself to him as a revealer of divine secrets, then it is not difficult to conceive how, amid the state of disquietude into which the dream recorded in this chapter had brought him, he only gave the command to summon all the wise men of Babylon without expressly mentioning their president, so that they came to him first, and Daniel was called only when the natural wisdom of the Chaldeans had shown itself helpless.
The naming of Daniel by his Hebrew name in the manifesto, intended for all the people of the kingdom as well as for the Jews, is simply intended, as in Dan 2:29, to designate the interpreter of the dream, as distinguished from the native wise men of Babylon, as a Jew, and at the same time as a worshipper of the most high God; and by the addition, “whose name is Belteshazzar, according to the name of my god,” Nebuchadnezzar intends to indicate that Daniel by this name was brought into fellowship with his chief god Bel, and that not only as a worshipper of the God of the Jews, but also of the great god Bel, he had become a partaker of the spirit of the holy gods. But by the holy gods Nebuchadnezzar does not understand Jehovah, the Holy One, deriving this predicate “holy,” as M. Geier says, ex theologia Isralitica , and the plur. “gods” denoting, as Calovius supposes, the mysterium pluralitatis personarum ; but he speaks of the holy gods, as Jerome, Calvin, and Grotius supposed, as a heathen ( ut idololatra ) in a polytheistic sense. For that the revelation of supernatural secrets belonged to the gods, and that the man who had this power must possess the spirit of the gods, all the heathen acknowledged. Thus Pharaoh (Gen 41:38) judged regarding Joseph, and thus also the Chaldeans say to Nebuchadnezzar (Dan 2:11) that only the gods could know his dream. The truth lying at the foundation of this belief was acknowledged by Joseph before Pharaoh, as also by Daniel before the Chaldean king, for both of them declared before the heathen kings that the interpretation of their dreams was not in the power of man, but could come only from God (Gen 41:16; Dan 2:28). But when in the case before us Nebuchadnezzar speaks of the holy gods, he means by the expression the as opposed to the , using the word holy of the good gods, probably from his conversation with Daniel on the subject.
In the address, Dan 4:6, he calls Belteshazzar , master of the magicians, probably from the special branch of Chaldean wisdom with which Daniel was particularly conversant, at the same time that he was chief president over all the magicians. , to oppress, to compel any one, to do violence to him; here, to make trouble, difficulty.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
‘Therefore I made a decree to bring in all the wise men of Babylon before me, that they might make known to me the interpretation of my dream.’
Those who see it as strange that he should call on these men after what we know from chapter 2 should remember a number of things. Firstly that the wise men here were not the same ones as in his younger days. The older more prominent ones had probably died off. And Daniel’s general supervision might well have made the younger ones more effective and efficient. Secondly that Nebuchadnezzar was older and more tolerant. The young man who in his intolerance and youthful arrogance, and possibly his instability, had been willing to sweep all the wise men of Babylon to destruction because they had been unable to do what most agreed was impossible, had become more mature and steady, and had begun to have greater respect for many of these wise men who were still held in awe in Babylon, and no doubt often seemed to achieve results.
And thirdly it might well have been that Daniel was about his many duties and was for the time being unavailable. Nebuchadnezzar was not the kind who liked to wait about patiently for his subordinates. If he could not have Daniel immediately it was worth trying his henchmen. He always had Daniel to fall back on. So he sent for them to draw on their knowledge.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Dan 4:6 Therefore made I a decree to bring in all the wise [men] of Babylon before me, that they might make known unto me the interpretation of the dream.
Ver. 6. Therefore I made a decree to bring in all the wise men of Babylon. ] Whom yet he had formerly found to be no better than braggarts and impostors. Was this man truly converted?
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
to bring in all the wise men, &c. Probably done from motives of state policy, or acting on Daniel’s own advice. A writer clever enough to be a forger would be wise enough not to leave the loophole alleged.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
to bring: Dan 2:2, Gen 41:7, Gen 41:8, Isa 8:19, Isa 47:12-14
Reciprocal: Gen 41:38 – in whom Est 1:13 – the wise Isa 19:3 – and they Dan 5:7 – to bring
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Dan 4:6. We do not know why the king did not call Daniel at first, since he had previously shown his superiority over the wise men. Perhaps the force of habit, or his natural attachment to his own kind had its influence with him. At any rate the usual result followed the call of the Chaldeans, for they could not interpret the dream.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Dan 4:6-7. Therefore made I a decree to bring in the wise men As he did before, on a like occasion; but they did not make known unto me the interpretation Though they had promised with great confidence, when consulted before, respecting his former dream, that if it were told them they would, without fail, interpret it. But the key of this dream was in a sacred prophecy, with which they were not acquainted, namely, Eze 31:3, &c., where the Assyrian monarch is compared, as Nebuchadnezzar is here, to a tree cut down for his pride. Had they read and considered that divine record, they might perhaps have discovered the mystery of this dream. But Providence ordered it so, that they should be first puzzled with it, that Daniels interpreting of it afterward might redound to the glory of Daniels God.