Daniel 4:1-6

4:1 (3:31) ¹  “King Nebuchadnezzar, to all peoples, nations, and language groups that live in all the land: Peace and prosperity! ²  4:2 I am delighted to tell you about the signs and wonders that the most high God has done for me.

4:3 “How great are his signs!

How mighty are his wonders!

His kingdom will last forever, ³ 

and his authority continues from one generation to the next.”

Nebuchadnezzar Dreams of a Tree Chopped Down

4:4 (4:1) ⁴  I, Nebuchadnezzar, was relaxing in my home, ⁵  living luxuriously ⁶  in my palace. 4:5 I saw a dream that ⁷  frightened me badly. The things I imagined while lying on my bed – these visions of my mind – were terrifying me. 4:6 So I issued an order ⁸  for all the wise men of Babylon to be brought ⁹  before me so that they could make known to me the interpretation of the dream.

¹ sn Beginning with 4:1, the verse numbers through 4:37 in the English Bible differ from the verse numbers in the Aramaic text (BHS), with 4:1 ET = 3:31 AT, 4:2 ET = 3:32 AT, 4:3 ET = 3:33 AT, 4:4 ET = 4:1 AT, etc., through 4:37 ET = 4:34 AT. Thus Dan 3:31-33 of the Aramaic text appears as Dan 4:1-3 in the English Bible, and the corresponding verses of ch. 4 differ accordingly. In spite of the division of the Aramaic text, a good case can be made that 3:31-33 AT (= 4:1-3 ET) is actually the introduction to ch. 4.

² tn Aram “May your peace increase!”

³ tn Aram “his kingdom is an everlasting kingdom.”

⁴ sn This verse marks the beginning of chap. 4 in the Aramaic text of Daniel (see the note on 4:1). The Greek OT (LXX) has the following addition: “In the eighteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign he said.” This date would suggest a link to the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. In general, the LXX of chapters 4-6 is very different from the MT, so much so that the following notes will call attention only to selected readings. In Daniel 4 the LXX lacks sizable portions of material in the MT (e.g., vv. 3-6, 31-32), includes sizable portions of material not in the MT (e.g., v. 14a, parts of vv. 16, 28), has a different order of some material (e.g., v. 8 after v. 9), and in some instances is vastly different from the MT (e.g., vv. 30, 34). Whether these differences are due to an excessively paraphrastic translation technique adopted for these chapters in the LXX, or are due to differences in the underlying Vorlage of the LXX, is a disputed matter. The latter seems more likely. There is a growing trend in modern scholarship to take the LXX of chapters 4-6 much more seriously than was the case in most earlier text-critical studies that considered this issue.

⁵ tn Aram “my house.”

⁶ tn Aram “happy.”

⁷ tn Aram “and it.”

⁸ tn Aram “from me there was placed a decree.”

⁹ tn The Aramaic infinitive here is active.