4:19 Then Daniel (whose name is also Belteshazzar) was upset for a brief time; 9 his thoughts were alarming him. The king said, “Belteshazzar, don’t let the dream and its interpretation alarm you.” But Belteshazzar replied, “Sir, 10 if only the dream were for your enemies and its interpretation applied to your adversaries!
7:1 In the first 16 year of King Belshazzar of Babylon, Daniel had 17 a dream filled with visions 18 while he was lying on his bed. Then he wrote down the dream in summary fashion. 19
4:18 “This is the dream that I, King Nebuchadnezzar, saw. Now you, Belteshazzar, declare its 21 interpretation, for none of the wise men in 22 my kingdom are able to make known to me the interpretation. But you can do so, for a spirit of the holy gods is in you.”
1 tn Various suggestions have been made concerning the plural “we.” It is probably the editorial plural and could be translated here as “I.”
2 sn Contrary to common belief, the point here is not that the wise men (Chaldeans) replied to the king in the Aramaic language, or that this language was uniquely the language of the Chaldeans. It was this view that led in the past to Aramaic being referred to as “Chaldee.” Aramaic was used as a lingua franca during this period; its origins and usage were not restricted to the Babylonians. Rather, this phrase is better understood as an editorial note (cf. NAB) marking the fact that from 2:4b through 7:28 the language of the book shifts from Hebrew to Aramaic. In 8:1, and for the remainder of the book, the language returns to Hebrew. Various views have been advanced to account for this change of language, most of which are unconvincing. Most likely the change in language is a reflection of stages in the transmission history of the book of Daniel.
3 tn Or “the.”
3 tn Aram “his servants.”
4 tn Or “the.”
4 tn Aram “one is your law,” i.e., only one thing is applicable to you.
5 tn Aram “a lying and corrupt word.”
6 tn Aram “I will know.”
5 tn Aram “about one hour.” The expression refers idiomatically to a brief period of time of undetermined length.
6 tn Aram “my lord.”
6 tn Aram “answered and said,” a common idiom to indicate a reply, but redundant in contemporary English.
7 tn It seems clear from what follows that Nebuchadnezzar clearly recalls the content of the dream, although obviously he does not know what to make of it. By not divulging the dream itself to the would-be interpreters, he intends to find out whether they are simply leading him on. If they can tell him the dream’s content, which he is able to verify, he then can have confidence in their interpretation, which is what eludes him. The translation “the matter is gone from me” (cf. KJV, ASV), suggesting that the king had simply forgotten the dream, is incorrect. The Aramaic word used here (אַזְדָּא, ’azda’) is probably of Persian origin; it occurs in the OT only here and in v. 8. There are two main possibilities for the meaning of the word: “the matter is promulgated by me” (see KBL 1048 s.v.) and therefore “publicly known” (cf. NRSV; F. Rosenthal, Grammar, 62-63, §189), or “the matter is irrevocable” (cf. NAB, NIV, TEV, CEV, NLT; HALOT 1808 s.v. אזד; cf. also BDB 1079 s.v.). The present translation reflects this latter option. See further E. Vogt, Lexicon linguae aramaicae, 3.
8 tn Aram “made limbs.” Cf. 3:29.
7 tn Aram “from me there was placed a decree.”
8 tn The Aramaic infinitive here is active.
8 sn The first year of Belshazzar’s reign would have been ca. 553
9 tn Aram “saw.”
10 tn Aram “and visions of his head.” The Aramaic is difficult here. Some scholars add a verb thought to be missing (e.g., “the visions of his head [were alarming him]”), but there is no external evidence to support such a decision and the awkwardness of the text at this point may be original.
11 tn Aram “head of words.” The phrase is absent in Theodotion. Cf. NIV “the substance of his dream.”
9 tn Aram “after this.”
10 tc The present translation reads פִּשְׁרֵהּ (pishreh, “its interpretation”) with the Qere and many medieval Hebrew
11 tn Aram “of.”