Daniel 5:10

5:10 Due to the noise ¹  caused by the king and his nobles, the queen mother ²  then entered the banquet room. She ³  said, “O king, live forever! Don’t be alarmed! Don’t be shaken!

Daniel 6:14

6:14 When the king heard this, ⁴  he was very upset and began thinking about ⁵  how he might rescue Daniel. Until late afternoon ⁶  he was struggling to find a way to rescue him.

Daniel 8:4

8:4 I saw that the ram was butting westward, northward, and southward. No animal ⁷  was able to stand before it, and there was none who could deliver from its power. ⁸  It did as it pleased and acted arrogantly. ⁹ 

[5:10]  ¹ tn Aram “words of the king.”

[5:10]  ² 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]  ³ 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.

[6:14]  ⁴ tn Aram “the word.”

[6:14]  ⁵ tn Aram “placed his mind on.”

[6:14]  ⁶ tn Aram “the entrances of the sun.”

[8:4]  ⁷ tn Or “beast” (NAB).

[8:4]  ⁸ tn Heb “hand.” So also in v. 7.

[8:4]  ⁹ tn In the Hiphil the Hebrew verb גָּדַל (gadal, “to make great; to magnify”) can have either a positive or a negative sense. For the former, used especially of God, see Ps 126:2, 3; Joel 2:21. In this chapter (8:4, 8, 11, 25) the word has a pejorative sense, describing the self-glorification of this king. The sense seems to be that of vainly assuming one’s own superiority through deliberate hubris.