Chapter 11
The Kingdom That Shall Never Be Destroyed
Daniel 2-7
18 min read
At a glance
Heaven does not crown the Son of Man with new words. He crowns Him with the words that Babylon and Persia have had to surrender.
From the emperors to the night
1Dan 2:47; 3:28
Nebuchadnezzar
praised twice, and each time someone else's God
2Dan 4:17, 25, 32
the tree
"the Most High rules over the kingship of men"
three times: beforehand, in the interpretation, and in that very hour
3Dan 6:26
Darius
"his kingdom is one that shall not be destroyed"
under the same letterhead as Nebuchadnezzar, character for character
4Dan 7:14
the Son of Man
"To Him was given dominion and honor and kingship"
the King of heaven
the emperor, at the end of seven times: true, but not everything
Father
the child, at the beginning, prompted
The same heaven, two mouths — and one of them may say Father.
- DOCUMENTED The three moments of the refrain in Dan 4.
- CALCULATED The refrain three times in Dan 4; עִלָּאָה, the Most High, only in Daniel; the three eternity formulas.
- CONSTRUED That the vision takes up the words of the emperors; no literary dependence has been measured.
I. The Letter
The letter opens the way state letters open — sender, addressees, greeting:
To all peoples that dwell in all the earth. This sender addresses nothing smaller; wherever his riders go, this must be read aloud, and his riders go everywhere. Then the occasion:
What follows is no campaign and no building report. The mightiest man of the inhabited world writes to everyone who can hear what God has done to him — and what that was is the kind of thing kings have chiseled out of their annals: for seven times he ate grass like an ox. He tells it himself. He signs it himself. And he sends it to everyone.
Scripture does preserve other letters of pagan kings — Persian decrees about a temple, about money, about passage. This is the only one in which a king tells in the first person what God has done to him. And what he sends around is his own humiliation, with a song of praise above it, as a heading over the report:
These are almost the words with which children, centuries later, learn to close their prayer: for thine is the kingdom, for ever. For the children it is the last line, given them to repeat by their Lord, prayed before they know what the words weigh. For this man it is the opening line of a letter — and what that line cost him begins years earlier, in a night when the king wakes with a start and no longer knows from what.
II. Praised Twice
The man who writes this had already praised the God he writes about twice before, and both times for what he saw.
The first time for a mystery. In the second year of his reign he had dreamed, and the dream was gone; no scholar could bring it back — this can only come from the gods, said his wise men, "whose dwelling is not with flesh". Then an exile from Judah was shown the mystery in a single night.
In the morning that exile stood before the throne, and before he told one word of the dream, he first told the king from Whom he held the crown: to you the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power and the strength and the honor. Given — a verb in the perfect tense, with another Giver behind it.
Only then the dream: the great image, and the stone that is cut out without hands — and in the interpretation, for the first time, the formula the book of Daniel will not let go of: a kingdom that shall never be destroyed. Then Nebuchadnezzar fell on his face, before an exile: "Truly, your God is the God of gods and the Lord of kings, and a Revealer of mysteries."
ExcursusThe Prayer of the Exile
The oldest piece of this story is not a decree but a prayer: the night prayer of an exile under a death sentence, prayed in the hour the mystery was shown him (Dan 2:20-21). Set beside the prayer this book follows, four members touch:
What the child blesses in two lines, the exile prayed in one night — both in a foreign land, both aloud, both before the outcome.
(The correspondences are DOCUMENTED — the words are there. That the one points to the other is CONSTRUED. Nothing is claimed here about borrowing: centuries lie between this Aramaic and the Greek of Matthew, and no textual history has been examined.)
The second time for a fire. In the plain of Dura an image had stood, 60 cubits high, and the whole world had to kneel before it; three Judeans remained standing, the furnace was heated seven times hotter, the three went bound into the fire — and the king leapt up, for he saw four men, walking loose in the middle of the fire. At the mouth of the furnace he praised again: "Praised be the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, who has sent his angel and delivered his servants [...] there is no other god who can deliver like this."
Praised twice, and each time it was someone else's God — the God of Daniel, the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. What a mouth confesses and what a heart holds on to are two things. The third lesson does not come by way of his scholars or by way of his furnace. It comes by way of himself.
III. The Tree
The next dream is his own again, and this time he has not lost it. A tree, in the middle of the earth, reaching up to heaven; there is food on it for all, the beasts of the field shelter beneath it, the birds live in its branches.
Then a watcher comes down, a holy one from heaven, and the command is relentless and precise: cut down the tree, lop off its branches — but leave the stump, in the grass of the field, with a band of iron and bronze; and let seven times pass over him. And the watcher cries aloud what the decree is for:
Daniel stands appalled for a moment when he hears it; "my lord," he then says, "may the dream be for those who hate you." But the interpretation cannot be softened: the tree is you.
And he tells the king the watcher's word straight to his face — you will be driven from among men, you will eat grass like oxen, for seven times, until you acknowledge that the Most High rules over the kingship of men and gives it to whom He will.
And then the exile does something no court pays for: he pleads with the man who once sentenced him to death to escape his own dream. "Break off your sins by righteousness, and your iniquities by showing mercy to the poor — perhaps there will be a lengthening of your peace." Perhaps. The door is still open.
For 12 months nothing happens. Then the king is walking on the roof of his palace, and Babylon lies below him, and he says it aloud:
The word is still in his mouth when the voice falls. From heaven, this time with no dream in between — and the voice speaks the same word of the watcher, for the third time, in that very hour.
At the same moment it is fulfilled. The man who a moment ago was looking out over his city is driven from among men; he eats grass like oxen; his body is wet with the dew of heaven; his hair grows like eagles' feathers and his nails like birds' claws.
DossierThe Refrain, Three Times
"The Most High rules over the kingship of men, and He gives it to whom He will." It stands there three times word for word, and all three times in this one chapter: 4:17 — the watcher cries it from heaven, before anything has happened; 4:25 — Daniel says it to the king's face, in the interpretation; 4:32 — the voice from heaven says it once more, in that very hour. (CALCULATED; Aramaic 4:14 · 4:22 · 4:29. In 5:21 Daniel repeats it to Belshazzar, about his father, in altered form: "God Most High" as subject, and "sets up", יְהָקֵים, instead of "gives", יִתְּנִנַּהּ.)
The verse itself is no news in this house: I quoted it in The Covenant with the Many (chapter 12) — from that throne, since a proud emperor had to learn it the hard way, one unchangeable law holds. What is new here is only the count: that it is said three times, and when — beforehand, in the interpretation, and in that very hour. To announce it once would have been justice; to announce it three times is patience. That is how a father warns: three times, before he does what he has said.
And the title the refrain carries: עִלָּאָה, "the Most High", occurs 10 times in Scripture — all 10 in Daniel: 3:26 · 4:2 · 4:17 · 4:24 · 4:25 · 4:32 · 4:34 · 5:18 · 5:21 · 7:25. The plural עֶלְיוֹנִין, in "the saints of the Most High", adds four more in chapter 7 (7:18 · 7:22 · 7:25 · 7:27). An earlier count gave ~~18~~: it counted the eight places with a ketiv-qere twice. (The three moments DOCUMENTED; the counts CALCULATED, Aramaic 3:26 · 3:32 · 4:14 · 4:21 · 4:22 · 4:29 · 4:31 · 5:18 · 5:21 · 7:25; that the repetition is patience is CONSTRUED.)
Seven times pass over him. The text does not tell what went on inside him in those years, and it cannot tell: there is no mind left for anything to go on in. There is grass, and dew, and a stump with a band around it.
And then comes one verse, and it has an order:
The eyes first. The understanding after. A human being does not become human again by thinking; he becomes human by looking up.
What he said then, he later dictated himself, in the letter:
His counselors seek him out again; his majesty is restored to him; greatness is even added to him, more than before. The empire has its king back. And the king writes a letter.
IV. The State Gazette of Persia
No second letter follows; Nebuchadnezzar disappears from the book. Babylon itself falls, in one night, under a son who knew all this and did not humble his heart. A Mede sits on the throne when the song sounds again.
Darius has let a law be coaxed out of him, and the law catches the one man he does not want to lose. All night he fasts; sleep will not come; at first light he runs to the pit and calls into the dark with a broken voice. And out of the dark an answer climbs up: "My God has sent his angel and shut the mouth of the lions."
Then this king writes too. "To all peoples, nations and languages that dwell in all the earth: may your peace be multiplied" — the opening of the letter from Babylon, now above a Persian state document. The empire has changed; the song has not. And in that decree, royal seal and all, stands this:
That shall not be destroyed. An exile had once spoken those words, in a throne room in Babylon, about a kingdom the God of heaven would one day set up. Now an emperor has them proclaimed, valid throughout his empire. Darius did not spend seven times in the grass for it. He went one night without sleep, and that was enough.
V. The Night
And then, in that same book, there is a night with no king present.
Daniel lies on his bed and sees the great sea, stirred up by the four winds of heaven, and out of the sea come up four beasts, one after another; thrones are set in place, the Ancient of Days takes his seat, the books are opened. In this night my concern is the words — and where they stood before.
All peoples, nations and languages — the address of the circular letter, but it is no longer a mailing list; they are servants. An everlasting dominion — the words of Nebuchadnezzar, after the seven times. That shall not be destroyed — the stone from the first dream, and the state gazette of Darius.
And further on in the night the heading above the letter also appears: to the people of the saints "an everlasting kingdom" is given.
Heaven does not crown the Son of Man with new words. He crowns Him with the words that Babylon and Persia have had to surrender.
ExpertThree Formulas, and Where They First Appear
Three eternity formulas carry the coronation of Daniel 7, and all three stand earlier in the book:
The numbers, counted over the unpointed Aramaic text of the whole of Daniel: מַלְכוּת עָלַם occurs twice — 4:3 and 7:27; there is no third occurrence. שָׁלְטָן עָלַם occurs twice — 4:34 and 7:14. דִּי לָא תִתְחַבַּל occurs three times — 2:44, 6:26 and 7:14. (CALCULATED; Aramaic 3:33 · 4:31 · 6:27.)
The objection belongs here: this could simply be the Aramaic idiom for "everlasting". In favor of that objection: עָלַם is indeed the ordinary word, and the link with "kingdom" is natural in this book. Against it: the distribution — each of the two עָלַם formulas occurs exactly twice, each time once with an emperor and once in the vision; idiom does not distribute itself so neatly. And the third formula decides it: דִּי לָא תִתְחַבַּל is not an idiom but a rare turn of phrase, three times in the whole book, and the three occurrences are the stone, the decree and the Son of Man.
(The counts are CALCULATED. That the vision takes up the words of the emperors is CONSTRUED: no literary dependence has been measured — only that the words are the same, and which of them stand first in the book.)
Of Daniel himself, at the close of the night, only this is written: his thoughts alarmed him, his color changed, and he kept the word in his heart.
VI. Two Mouths
So the last line of the letter remains — the last words recorded of Nebuchadnezzar, anywhere:
The King of heaven. Nowhere else in Scripture is God called this — it is one man's name for Him, said once, and then the curtain falls. And there is nothing to improve on in that name. King: that is true, and few have learned it at greater cost. Of heaven: that is true; he looked that heaven in the eye himself, in the hour his understanding returned. The emperor is right in everything he says. He just does not say everything.
For centuries later a Man sits on a mountainside among his disciples, and He teaches them to pray to the same heaven: "Our Father, which art in heaven." And at the close of that prayer they learn to say: for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever.
In Matthew the doxology is prayed by children; in Daniel it is drawn out of emperors. The same words, two mouths. The emperor says them at the end of seven times, with the grass still behind him; the child says them at the beginning, prompted, out of trust — and it receives one word with them that stands in no decree. The emperor writes: the King of heaven. The child says: Father. The same heaven, two mouths — and one of them may say Father.
And twice in the night of the vision a verb stands in the passive: to Him dominion was given, and the kingship was given to the people of the saints. It is the word with which everything began — to you the God of heaven has given the kingdom: the first thing the emperor ever heard about his own crown. Given — not seized.
Whoever is given the kingdom need not ask for it — and that is why there is one petition in this prayer that the Son Himself never had to pray.
HeartThe Same Heaven
Everything the emperor wrote was true, and in praying you need take nothing away from it. Heaven rules. His works are truth, his ways are just, and those who walk in pride He is able to humble — there are lives that have learned this the same hard way he did, and whoever has such a life behind them prays the closing line differently from whoever has only read it.
But the prayer you were taught begins one word further on. To the heaven that brought Babylon low you may say "Father". Not because you have seen more than Nebuchadnezzar — he saw more than most of us ever will. But because the Son to whom the kingship was given has prompted you with that word, as a father prompts his child with words it cannot yet read. The costliest word of this prayer is the first, and it was put in your mouth before you knew what it weighed.
And whoever says at the close: thine is the kingdom — says what a watcher cried before it happened, what an exile prayed in the night, what two emperors had proclaimed throughout their empires, and what was given to the Son of Man in one night. There is one possession in this universe that shall not be destroyed, and it belongs to your Father. A child who knows that can sleep — even in Babylon.