# 5 - Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream.

The Lord said to me…”I will test my people with a Plumbline, Amos 7:8 (TLB)

The Plumbline is a blog to encourage the Body of Christ.

# 5 - Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream.

Daniel 2:1-2 (NLT) 1 One night during the second year of his reign, Nebuchadnezzar had such disturbing dreams that he couldn’t sleep. 2 He called in his magicians, enchanters, sorcerers, and astrologers, and he demanded that they tell him what he had dreamed. As they stood before the king,

The Plumbline

Soon after Nebuchadnezzar’s accession to the throne, he was plagued with a recurring dream. Since Daniel recalled and interpreted only a single dream (cf. vv. 24-26), the use of the plural here (dreams) seems to indicate a recurrence of the same dream. This dream evidently was perceived by Nebuchadnezzar as having great significance, for he was troubled by the dream and so agitated that he was unable to sleep.

The king summoned the wise men of his realm. They professed to be able to foretell the future by one means or another. If the method used by one failed to produce the desired result, hopefully the method employed by another would reveal the dream’s significance. They were called collectively to exercise their enchantments in order to give the king an interpretation that would placate him. The king challenged the wise men, saying, I want to know what it means.

Daniel 2:4-6 (NLT) 4 Then the astrologers answered the king in Aramaic, “Long live the king! Tell us the dream, and we will tell you what it means.” 5 But the king said to the astrologers, “I am serious about this. If you don’t tell me what my dream was and what it means, you will be torn limb from limb, and your houses will be turned into heaps of rubble! 6 But if you tell me what I dreamed and what the dream means, I will give you many wonderful gifts and honors. Just tell me the dream and what it means!”

The desperation of the wise men (2:4-11)

Evidently the request to interpret a dream had been made of the wise men on other occasions for they were not surprised. The wise men confidently asserted that when the king revealed the dream to them, they would interpret it to him. They were confident that with their collective wisdom, they could satisfy the king with an interpretation.

Though the king may have made such a demand on the wise men previously and been satisfied with their answers, he evidently had never asked them to interpret a dream that he discerned had such significance. So he decided to test them. If they could predict the future by interpreting dreams, they should be able to reconstruct the past and recall the king’s dream. So he refused to share his dream with them. This does not mean he had forgotten it. Had he done so, the wise men, to save themselves from death, could easily have fabricated a dream and then interpreted it. The king reasoned that if they could not recall the past, their predictions concerning the future could not be trusted.

The king promised rewards and honor for the wise men’s recalling and interpreting the dream. But he put them under a death penalty (they would be cut into pieces) and their houses would be burned to rubble if they proved to be false prognosticators who could not recall the dream.

Again the wise men asked that the king share the dream with them, promising then to interpret it. The king complained that they were stalling for time. He again referred to the penalty for failure to tell him the dream. He felt that the only way he could trust their interpretation of the future was by having them first recall his dream. Otherwise he would conclude that they were conspiring to tell him misleading and wicked things. Also Nebuchadnezzar may have become impatient with the wise men who were presumably older than he as he had inherited them from his father. Another reason for the test may have been that he was suspicious of their claims to wisdom.

To defend themselves, the wise men asserted that the king was making an unreasonable request, one never asked by any other potentate. They attested that the future belongs to the gods, not to men. Interestingly this was an admission that they had deceived the king in their past interpretations, a startling revelation from those held in high esteem in the court.