Daniel 4:4

Nebuchadnezzar Dreams of a Tree Chopped Down

4:4 (4:1) ¹  I, Nebuchadnezzar, was relaxing in my home, ²  living luxuriously ³  in my palace.

Daniel 2:17

2:17 Then Daniel went to his home and informed his friends Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah of the matter.

Daniel 2:5

2:5 The king replied ⁴  to the wise men, “My decision is firm. ⁵  If you do not inform me of both the dream and its interpretation, you will be dismembered ⁶  and your homes reduced to rubble!

Daniel 4:30

4:30 The king uttered these words: “Is this not the great Babylon that I have built for a royal residence ⁷  by my own mighty strength ⁸  and for my majestic honor?”

Daniel 5:3

5:3 So they brought the gold and silver ⁹  vessels that had been confiscated from the temple, the house of God ¹⁰  in Jerusalem, and the king and his nobles, together with his wives and concubines, drank from them.

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 3:29

3:29 I hereby decree ¹⁴  that any people, nation, or language group that blasphemes ¹⁵  the god of Shadrach, Meshach, or Abednego will be dismembered and his home reduced to rubble! For there exists no other god who can deliver in this way.”

Daniel 6:10

6:10 When Daniel realized ¹⁶  that a written decree had been issued, he entered his home, where the windows ¹⁷  in his upper room opened toward Jerusalem. ¹⁸  Three ¹⁹  times daily he was ²⁰  kneeling ²¹  and offering prayers and thanks to his God just as he had been accustomed to do previously.

Daniel 5:23

5:23 Instead, you have exalted yourself against the Lord of heaven. You brought before you the vessels from his temple, and you and your nobles, together with your wives and concubines, drank wine from them. You praised the gods of silver, gold, bronze, iron, wood, and stone – gods ²²  that cannot see or hear or comprehend! But you have not glorified the God who has in his control ²³  your very breath and all your ways!

[4:4]  ¹ 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.

[4:4]  ² tn Aram “my house.”

[4:4]  ³ tn Aram “happy.”

[2:5]  ⁴ tn Aram “answered and said,” a common idiom to indicate a reply, but redundant in contemporary English.

[2:5]  ⁵ 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.

[2:5]  ⁶ tn Aram “made limbs.” Cf. 3:29.

[4:30]  ⁷ tn Aram “house.”

[4:30]  ⁸ tn Aram “by the might of my strength.”

[5:3]  ¹⁰ tc The present translation reads וְכַסְפָּא (vÿkhaspa’, “and the silver”) with Theodotion and the Vulgate. Cf. v. 2. The form was probably accidentally dropped from the Aramaic text by homoioteleuton.

[5:3]  ¹¹ tn Aram “the temple of the house of God.” The phrase seems rather awkward. The Vulgate lacks “of the house of God,” while Theodotion and the Syriac lack “the house.”

[5:10]  ¹³ tn Aram “words of the king.”

[5:10]  ¹⁴ 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]  ¹⁵ 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.

[3:29]  ¹⁶ tn Aram “from me is placed an edict.”

[3:29]  ¹⁷ tn Aram “speaks negligence.”

[6:10]  ¹⁹ tn Aram “knew.”

[6:10]  ²⁰ sn In later rabbinic thought this verse was sometimes cited as a proof text for the notion that one should pray only in a house with windows. See b. Berakhot 34b.

[6:10]  ²¹ map For the location of Jerusalem see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[6:10]  ²² sn This is apparently the only specific mention in the OT of prayer being regularly offered three times a day. The practice was probably not unique to Daniel, however.

[6:10]  ²³ tc Read with several medieval Hebrew MSS and printed editions הֲוָה (havah) rather than the MT הוּא (hu’).

[6:10]  ²⁴ tn Aram “kneeling on his knees” (so NASB).

[5:23]  ²² tn Aram “which.”

[5:23]  ²³ tn Aram “in whose hand [are].”