Daniel 2:1

Nebuchadnezzar Has a Disturbing Dream

2:1 In the second year of his ¹  reign Nebuchadnezzar had many dreams. ²  His mind ³  was disturbed and he suffered from insomnia. ⁴ 

Daniel 5:5-6

5:5 At that very moment the fingers of a human hand appeared ⁵  and wrote on the plaster of the royal palace wall, opposite the lampstand. ⁶  The king was watching the back ⁷  of the hand that was writing. 5:6 Then all the color drained from the king’s face ⁸  and he became alarmed. ⁹  The joints of his hips gave way, ¹⁰  and his knees began knocking together.

Daniel 5:10

5:10 Due to the noise ¹¹  caused by the king and his nobles, the queen mother ¹²  then entered the banquet room. She ¹³  said, “O king, live forever! Don’t be alarmed! Don’t be shaken!

Daniel 7:28

7:28 “This is the conclusion of the matter. As for me, Daniel, my thoughts troubled me greatly, and the color drained from my face. ¹⁴  But I kept the matter to myself.” ¹⁵ 

Genesis 41:1

Joseph’s Rise to Power

41:1 At the end of two full years ¹⁶  Pharaoh had a dream. ¹⁷  As he was standing by the Nile,

Job 7:13-14

7:13 If ¹⁸  I say, ¹⁹  “My bed will comfort me, ²⁰ 

my couch will ease ²¹  my complaint,”

7:14 then you scare me ²²  with dreams

and terrify ²³  me with ²⁴  visions,

[2:1]  ¹ tn Heb “Nebuchadnezzar’s.” The possessive pronoun is substituted in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[2:1]  ² tn Heb “dreamed dreams.” The plural is used here and in v. 2, but the singular in v. 3. The plural “dreams” has been variously explained. Some interpreters take the plural as denoting an indefinite singular (so GKC 400 §124.o). But it may be that it is describing a stream of related dreams, or a dream state. In the latter case, one might translate: “Nebuchadnezzar was in a trance.” See further, J. A. Montgomery, Daniel (ICC), 142.

[2:1]  ³ tn Heb “his spirit.”

[2:1]  ⁴ tn Heb “his sleep left (?) him.” The use of the verb הָיָה (hayah, “to be”) here is unusual. The context suggests a meaning such as “to be finished” or “gone.” Cf. Dan 8:27. Some scholars emend the verb to read נָדְדָה (nadÿdah, “fled”); cf. Dan 6:19. See further, DCH 2:540 s.v. היה I Ni.3; HALOT 244 s.v. היה nif; BDB 227-28 s.v. הָיָה Niph.2.

[5:5]  ⁵ tn Aram “came forth.”

[5:5]  ⁶ sn The mention of the lampstand in this context is of interest because it suggests that the writing was in clear view.

[5:5]  ⁷ tn While Aramaic פַּס (pas) can mean the palm of the hand, here it seems to be the back of the hand that is intended.

[5:6]  ⁸ tn Aram “[the king’s] brightness changed for him.”

[5:6]  ⁹ tn Aram “his thoughts were alarming him.”

[5:6]  ¹⁰ tn Aram “his loins went slack.”

[5:10]  ¹¹ tn Aram “words of the king.”

[5:10]  ¹² tn Aram “the queen” (so NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV). In the following discourse this woman is able to recall things about Daniel that go back to the days of Nebuchadnezzar, things that Belshazzar does not seem to recollect. It is likely that she was the wife not of Belshazzar but of Nabonidus or perhaps even Nebuchadnezzar. In that case, “queen” here means “queen mother” (cf. NCV “the king’s mother”).

[5:10]  ¹³ tn Aram “The queen.” The translation has used the pronoun “she” instead because repetition of the noun here would be redundant in terms of English style.

[7:28]  ¹⁴ tn Aram “my brightness was changing on me.”

[7:28]  ¹⁵ tn Aram “in my heart.”

[41:1]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “two years, days.”

[41:1]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “was dreaming.”

[7:13]  ¹⁸ tn The particle כִּי (ki) could also be translated “when,” but “if” might work better to introduce the conditional clause and to parallel the earlier reasoning of Job in v. 4 (using אִם, ’im). See GKC 336-37 §112.hh.

[7:13]  ¹⁹ tn The verb literally means “say,” but here the connotation must be “think” or “say to oneself” – “when I think my bed….”

[7:13]  ²⁰ sn Sleep is the recourse of the troubled and unhappy. Here “bed” is metonymical for sleep. Job expects sleep to give him the comfort that his friends have not.

[7:13]  ²¹ tn The verb means “to lift up; to take away” (נָשָׂא, nasa’). When followed by the preposition בּ (bet) with the complement of the verb, the idea is “to bear a part; to take a share,” or “to share in the burden” (cf. Num 11:7). The idea then would be that the sleep would ease the complaint. It would not end the illness, but the complaining for a while.

[7:14]  ²² tn The Piel of חָתַת (khatat) occurs only here and in Jer 51:56 (where it is doubtful). The meaning is clearly “startle, scare.” The perfect verb with the ו (vav) is fitting in the apodosis of the conditional sentence.

[7:14]  ²³ tn The Piel of בָּעַת (ba’at, “terrify”) is one of the characteristic words in the book of Job; it occurs in 3:5; 9:34; 13:11, 21; 15:24; 18:11; and 33:7.

[7:14]  ²⁴ tn The prepositions בּ (bet) and מִן (min) interchange here; they express the instrument of causality. See N. Sarna, “The Interchange of the Prepositions bet and min in Biblical Hebrew,” JBL 78 (1959): 310-16. Emphasis on the instruments of terror in this verse is highlighted by the use of chiasm in which the prepositional phrases comprise the central elements (ab//b’a’). Verse 18 contains another example.