Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem, carried its people into exile, and made Babylon an imposing imperial capital. Yet the man who could remove kings could not preserve his own reason when God humbled him. His victories did not make his cruelty righteous, and his authority never entitled him to the worship he demanded.
A Great King Still Lived Under Heaven
Nebuchadnezzar II succeeded his father Nabopolassar, founder of the Neo-Babylonian dynasty. Neo-Babylonian distinguishes this later empire centered in Babylon from earlier Babylonian kingdoms. He took the throne in 605 BC, while his first full official regnal year began in 604 BC; this explains why accounts of his reign sometimes begin with either date. Ancient rulers did not all count the first partial year alike. His reign ended in 562 BC.
His Akkadian name is commonly rendered Nabu-kudurri-usur and invokes the Babylonian god Nabu. Jeremiah often uses the Hebrew form Nebuchadrezzar, while other passages use Nebuchadnezzar. Those spellings identify the same king. When Daniel called him a king of kings, he recognized an emperor ruling over other kings, not a divine being.
The Babylonian Chronicle records his accession and his capture of Jerusalem in 597 BC, when he removed its king and appointed a replacement. His own building inscriptions also survive. A cylinder in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for example, commemorates Babylon’s outer wall. These records establish important parts of the setting; they do not document every event in Daniel. The Hanging Gardens are less certain. Their builder and location remain disputed, and Scripture does not mention them, so I would not credit them to Nebuchadnezzar as settled history. Jehoiakim was obliged to serve Babylon before the 597 BC campaign:
In his days Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up, and Jehoiakim became his vassal for three years. Then he turned and rebelled against him. And the LORD sent against him raiding bands of Chaldeans, bands of Syrians, bands of Moabites, and bands of the people of Ammon; He sent them against Judah to destroy it, according to the word of the LORD which He had spoken by His servants the prophets. Surely at the commandment of the LORD this came upon Judah, to remove them from His sight because of the sins of Manasseh, according to all that he had done, and also because of the innocent blood that he had shed; for he had filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, which the LORD would not pardon.
Judah lost its independence through a succession of invasions and rebellions. Jehoiakim served Babylon for three years before rebelling. During the 597 BC campaign, his son Jehoiachin surrendered, and Babylon carried away the royal household, military men, craftsmen, and temple treasures (2 Kings 24:10-16). Nebuchadnezzar appointed Jehoiachin’s uncle Mattaniah in his place and renamed him Zedekiah (2 Kings 24:17). Removing leaders and skilled workers weakened Judah while supplying Babylon with people it could put to use.
Deportation forced people from their homeland into settlements within the empire; families could not simply choose to remain at home. Yet 2 Kings explains Judah’s defeat through more than Babylon’s military strength. Manasseh had filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, and Judah had persisted in the sins against which God’s prophets warned. The Lord gave His people over to judgment, so their defeat did not establish that Babylon’s gods had overcome Him. Zedekiah, the replacement king, also rebelled, and the next chapter describes the siege during his reign:
But the army of the Chaldeans pursued the king, and they overtook him in the plains of Jericho. All his army was scattered from him. So they took the king and brought him up to the king of Babylon at Riblah, and they pronounced judgment on him. Then they killed the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes, put out the eyes of Zedekiah, bound him with bronze fetters, and took him to Babylon. And in the fifth month, on the seventh day of the month (which was the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon), Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard, a servant of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem. He burned the house of the LORD and the king's house; all the houses of Jerusalem, that is, all the houses of the great, he burned with fire.
The Babylonian siege reduced Jerusalem to famine before the army broke through its defenses (2 Kings 25:1-4). Zedekiah fled, but the Chaldeans overtook him near Jericho and took him to Nebuchadnezzar at Riblah. There the conquerors killed his sons before his eyes, then blinded him and carried him to Babylon. Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, burned the temple, palace, and major houses. His forces demolished the walls and removed more captives and sacred vessels, leaving some of the poor to cultivate the land (2 Kings 25:10-17). Jerusalem’s destruction is usually dated to 587 or 586 BC, depending on the chronology used.
I do not want those dates to conceal what the judgment involved. People starved during the siege, families lost their homes, and worship at the temple ceased when the sanctuary burned. Judah had violated its covenant with God, and His judgment was righteous. The devastation was nevertheless terrible. Jeremiah had spent years urging the people to turn back before it came (Jeremiah 25:3-7):
"Therefore thus says the LORD of hosts: 'Because you have not heard My words, behold, I will send and take all the families of the north,' says the LORD, 'and Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, My servant, and will bring them against this land, against its inhabitants, and against these nations all around, and will utterly destroy them, and make them an astonishment, a hissing, and perpetual desolations. Moreover I will take from them the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the sound of the millstones and the light of the lamp. And this whole land shall be a desolation and an astonishment, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years. 'Then it will come to pass, when seventy years are completed, that I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, the land of the Chaldeans, for their iniquity,' says the LORD; 'and I will make it a perpetual desolation."
God called Nebuchadnezzar His servant because He was using the king to carry out an announced judgment. The title did not declare this pagan ruler righteous or approve his motives. In the same passage God set a term of seventy years for Babylon’s domination and promised to punish that nation for its own iniquity. The empire could serve His purpose and still answer for the blood it shed.
Habakkuk struggled with precisely that problem. How could God use the Chaldeans, whose violence and arrogance were so conspicuous, to discipline Judah?
You are of purer eyes than to behold evil, And cannot look on wickedness. Why do You look on those who deal treacherously, And hold Your tongue when the wicked devours A person more righteous than he? Why do You make men like fish of the sea, Like creeping things that have no ruler over them? They take up all of them with a hook, They catch them in their net, And gather them in their dragnet. Therefore they rejoice and are glad. Therefore they sacrifice to their net, And burn incense to their dragnet; Because by them their share is sumptuous And their food plentiful. Shall they therefore empty their net, And continue to slay nations without pity?
Habakkuk pictured the conquerors gathering people as fishermen gather a catch, then honoring the means by which they had become wealthy. Their success encouraged them to credit their own power or their god (Habakkuk 1:9-11). He was asking why God permitted a more wicked power to devour others and how long it could continue slaughtering nations without pity. God had appointed Babylon to carry out judgment, but its slaughter and plunder remained wicked acts (Habakkuk 1:5-12). The conquerors would also have to answer to Him.
For Judah and the neighboring kingdoms, however, resisting Babylon could not undo the judgment God had announced. Jeremiah used a yoke, the wooden harness placed on working animals, to explain the submission God now required:
"And now I have given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, My servant; and the beasts of the field I have also given him to serve him. So all nations shall serve him and his son and his son's son, until the time of his land comes; and then many nations and great kings shall make him serve them. And it shall be, that the nation and kingdom which will not serve Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, and which will not put its neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon, that nation I will punish,' says the LORD, 'with the sword, the famine, and the pestilence, until I have consumed them by his hand."
Jeremiah was to send yokes to the kings of Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre, and Sidon through their envoys (Jeremiah 27:2-3). The Creator had assigned their lands to Nebuchadnezzar for a time. Prophets who promised that these nations would escape his rule were offering false reassurance (Jeremiah 27:9-11). At that particular point, submitting to Babylon meant accepting God’s declared discipline rather than trusting a flattering prediction. God also limited the authority He gave Babylon: its own time would come, and other nations would make it serve them.
There is a difficulty in the chapter’s heading: the Masoretic text names Jehoiakim in verse 1, while verse 3 and the later addresses name Zedekiah. Some Hebrew manuscripts and ancient versions read Zedekiah in the heading, as the NET textual note explains. The manuscript difference concerns the heading; the body of the chapter plainly addresses envoys coming to Zedekiah and makes the required submission clear.
Ezekiel described a later campaign during Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, when his army labored against Tyre without receiving the spoil it expected:
"Son of man, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon caused his army to labor strenuously against Tyre; every head was made bald, and every shoulder rubbed raw; yet neither he nor his army received wages from Tyre, for the labor which they expended on it. Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: 'Surely I will give the land of Egypt to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon; he shall take away her wealth, carry off her spoil, and remove her pillage; and that will be the wages for his army. I have given him the land of Egypt for his labor, because they worked for Me,' says the Lord GOD."
Ezekiel’s description of bald heads and raw shoulders shows how strenuous the campaign had been. Yet the army had received no spoil as wages for its labor, and God assigned Egypt as its payment. Nebuchadnezzar planned the campaigns and commanded the soldiers, but God had used their labor for His own purpose. As Jeremiah had already warned, carrying out an assigned task did not let Babylon fix the length of its rule or escape judgment for wrongdoing.
Faithful Exiles and the God Who Gives Wisdom
Within that imperial setting, Daniel takes us back to the earlier capture of selected Judean youths, before Jerusalem’s final destruction. His opening dates the siege to Jehoiakim’s third year; Jeremiah 25 refers to the fourth year in connection with Nebuchadnezzar’s rise (Daniel 1:1-2; Jeremiah 25:1). Counting a king’s first partial year differently provides a reasonable explanation for the one-year difference. We need to consider those conventions before assuming that the writers contradicted one another.
The selected captives were trained in Babylon’s language and literature for work at court. They would need those skills to serve competently, but the training was part of a life now directed by the palace. Royal officials supplied their provisions and replaced their Hebrew names with Babylonian ones. Daniel became Belteshazzar; Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah became Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego (Daniel 1:3-7). They were expected to function within a court whose religion and loyalties differed from their own.
But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king's delicacies, nor with the wine which he drank; therefore he requested of the chief of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself. Now God had brought Daniel into the favor and goodwill of the chief of the eunuchs. And the chief of the eunuchs said to Daniel, "I fear my lord the king, who has appointed your food and drink. For why should he see your faces looking worse than the young men who are your age? Then you would endanger my head before the king."
Daniel first asked the chief official to let him avoid the king’s provisions because he would not defile himself. The official feared that a change leaving the young men unhealthy could cost him his life. Daniel then proposed to the steward a ten-day test of vegetables and water, with their condition examined afterward. The steward agreed, and their favorable appearance allowed the arrangement to continue (Daniel 1:11-16). Daniel held to his conviction while dealing considerately with the people responsible for him.
The four men did not reject all learning or refuse government service. They learned well and served capably without allowing the palace to decide their obedience to God. That required discernment about what they could accept and where they must refuse. Withdrawal from every responsibility would not have been the same thing as faithfulness, and neither would adopting everything Babylon required.
When Nebuchadnezzar examined them, he found their wisdom and understanding ten times better than that of his court specialists. The passage names magicians and astrologers as recognized classes of advisers; it does not endorse their occult practices. Nor does it make vegetables a method for obtaining extraordinary intelligence. God gave the four their knowledge and skill, and He gave Daniel understanding of visions and dreams (Daniel 1:17-20).
Daniel 1 ends by looking ahead to Cyrus’s first year (Daniel 1:21). Babylon’s empire would not outlive the captive it had taken into its service. Chapter 2 then returns to an early crisis in Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, when the king’s advisers could not give him the knowledge he demanded:
Daniel answered in the presence of the king, and said, "The secret which the king has demanded, the wise men, the astrologers, the magicians, and the soothsayers cannot declare to the king. But there is a God in heaven who reveals secrets, and He has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days. Your dream, and the visions of your head upon your bed, were these: As for you, O king, thoughts came to your mind while on your bed, about what would come to pass after this; and He who reveals secrets has made known to you what will be. But as for me, this secret has not been revealed to me because I have more wisdom than anyone living, but for our sakes who make known the interpretation to the king, and that you may know the thoughts of your heart."
Nebuchadnezzar required both the dream and its interpretation. Some readers think he had forgotten what he dreamed; others think he withheld it to test his advisers. Daniel does not tell us which, but the demand was clear. The men insisted that no one on earth could do what he asked and claimed that only gods who did not dwell with flesh could reveal it. The king became furious and ordered all Babylon’s wise men destroyed, including Daniel and his companions (Daniel 2:1-13).
Daniel spoke prudently to Arioch, learned why the decree had been issued, and asked the king for time. He then told his companions what had happened so they could seek God’s mercy together. They needed an answer none could produce by ingenuity or training. God revealed the secret to Daniel in a night vision, and Daniel thanked Him before going back to court. He praised God for revealing hidden things and acknowledged His authority to raise up kings or remove them (Daniel 2:14-23).
Before telling the dream, Daniel asked that the wise men be spared (Daniel 2:24-25). He did not use their failure as an opportunity to have rivals killed. He also refused to take personal credit before Nebuchadnezzar. Babylon’s specialists could not reveal the secret, but the God in heaven had made it known. Daniel could respect the king’s office while telling him plainly that the revelation had come from beyond the resources of his court.
The Kingdoms in the Image and the Stone That Remains
The king had seen an imposing image with a golden head, silver chest and arms, bronze belly and thighs, iron legs, and feet of iron mixed with clay (Daniel 2:31-35). Before explaining the metals, Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar that the God of heaven had given him his authority, power, strength, and glory. Then he identified the king and his kingdom as the head of gold (Daniel 2:36-38). Nebuchadnezzar possessed real greatness, but he had received it.
The kingdoms that followed would differ in character and strength. Daniel called the next one inferior, which need not mean smaller in territory or weaker in every military respect. The book later identifies Media and Persia and then Greece, providing grounds for reading the silver and bronze stages. I understand the iron kingdom as Rome, extending into the divided final form pictured by the feet. Interpreters dispute the fourth kingdom and its final stage, but the image plainly shows successive human empires whose strength cannot make them permanent (Daniel 2:39-43).
Iron and clay retained their different qualities, and no attempt to mingle them could produce a lasting union. A stone cut without hands struck the feet and crushed all the image’s materials together, leaving them like chaff blown away. The stone then became a mountain filling the earth (Daniel 2:34-35). God would establish a kingdom that could never be destroyed or handed over to another people (Daniel 2:44-45). The human empires would not gradually improve themselves into it.
I understand that promised kingdom to be fulfilled in the Messiah. Jesus applied the rejected stone of Psalm 118 to Himself, and He will return bodily to establish His reign on earth. The stone passages need to be read in their own settings, but they direct us toward God’s appointed King. Daniel 2 supplies a broad outline rather than every detail of the prophetic sequence. The study on the seventy weeks of Daniel examines another part of that revelation.
When Daniel had finished explaining the dream, Nebuchadnezzar fell before him and acknowledged Daniel’s God as God of gods, Lord of kings, and revealer of secrets. He promoted Daniel, who also asked for appointments for his companions (Daniel 2:46-49). Those men had prayed with him in the danger, and he remembered them when advancement came. The king had heard the truth about the source and limits of his authority. Yet his next recorded demand for worship shows that he was still unwilling to obey the truth he had acknowledged.
The Golden Image, the Furnace, and the Divine Deliverer
Then King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished; and he rose in haste and spoke, saying to his counselors, "Did we not cast three men bound into the midst of the fire?" They answered and said to the king, "True, O king." "Look!" he answered, "I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire; and they are not hurt, and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God." Then Nebuchadnezzar went near the mouth of the burning fiery furnace and spoke, saying, "Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego, servants of the Most High God, come out, and come here." Then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego came from the midst of the fire. And the satraps, administrators, governors, and the king's counselors gathered together, and they saw these men on whose bodies the fire had no power; the hair of their head was not singed nor were their garments affected, and the smell of fire was not on them. Nebuchadnezzar spoke, saying, "Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego, who sent His Angel and delivered His servants who trusted in Him, and they have frustrated the king's word, and yielded their bodies, that they should not serve nor worship any god except their own God! Therefore I make a decree that any people, nation, or language which speaks anything amiss against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego shall be cut in pieces, and their houses shall be made an ash heap; because there is no other God who can deliver like this."
Nebuchadnezzar set up a colossal golden image on the plain of Dura and summoned his officials. When the music sounded, the gathered peoples had to bow or be thrown immediately into a furnace. He was making religious submission a test of loyalty throughout the government (Daniel 3:1-7).
Daniel does not identify the image as a portrait of Nebuchadnezzar or say that it was built to overturn the dream of the different metals. Those are possible reconstructions. What the chapter explicitly records is a command to worship an image, backed by a threat of death. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego could perform their public duties, but they could not give the king authority over worship owed to God.
The accusers presented their refusal as disregard for Nebuchadnezzar, even reminding him that he had appointed these men over Babylon’s affairs (Daniel 3:8-15). He gave them another opportunity to bow and challenged any god to rescue them from his hand. Their answer acknowledged that God could deliver them, but it did not make their obedience conditional on rescue. Even if deliverance did not come, they would not serve the king’s gods or worship his image (Daniel 3:16-18). They had settled whom they would serve before knowing whether they would survive.
Incensed by their refusal, Nebuchadnezzar ordered the furnace heated seven times more than usual. Soldiers bound the men and carried them to the fire, where the flames killed the soldiers themselves (Daniel 3:19-23). His rage was costing the lives of those carrying out his orders. To his astonishment, he saw four figures walking unharmed where three bound men had been thrown. After he called the men out, the gathered officials examined their bodies, hair, and clothes and found them unscathed, without even the smell of fire.
The king’s Aramaic description of the fourth figure can be rendered as a son of the gods or the Son of God. He spoke as a pagan ruler describing an extraordinary sight; his words alone do not establish a complete confession of Christ’s identity. In verse 28 he said their God had sent His angel, or messenger. I believe the fourth figure was likely a Christophany, an appearance of the eternal Son before He took on human flesh in the incarnation. He fits the Old Testament pattern of the distinctive Angel of the Lord, although the identification is less explicit here.
Nebuchadnezzar blessed their God and recognized that the men had yielded their bodies rather than worship another. His new decree, however, still threatened dismemberment and ruined houses for those who spoke against their God. He was defending the God he had challenged while continuing to compel compliance through terror. His acknowledgment of God’s power was true; it did not authorize those brutal penalties or make coerced devotion acceptable worship.
The king promoted the men after God publicly delivered them (Daniel 3:30). I need to read their rescue alongside Paul’s account in Hebrews of faithful people who also endured torture and death. It is reckless to blame a suffering believer for lacking faith merely because rescue has not come. The three men trusted God’s ability to save them without claiming a right to dictate the outcome. We owe Him obedience when it brings relief and when it exposes us to suffering.
The Tree, the Warning, and the Humbling of Pride
Daniel 4 records a further encounter with God’s authority, this time in Nebuchadnezzar’s own testimony. He tells the peoples of his empire how the Most High dealt with him, beginning with praise before recounting the judgment that brought him to it (Daniel 4:1-3). He ends with this account of his restoration:
And at the end of the time I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my understanding returned to me; and I blessed the Most High and praised and honored Him who lives forever: For His dominion is an everlasting dominion, And His kingdom is from generation to generation. All the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing; He does according to His will in the army of heaven And among the inhabitants of the earth. No one can restrain His hand Or say to Him, "What have You done?" At the same time my reason returned to me, and for the glory of my kingdom, my honor and splendor returned to me. My counselors and nobles resorted to me, I was restored to my kingdom, and excellent majesty was added to me. Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, all of whose works are truth, and His ways justice. And those who walk in pride He is able to put down.
The king had been flourishing in his palace when a dream made him afraid. This time he told the dream to his advisers, but they could not interpret it. When Daniel came, Nebuchadnezzar described a magnificent tree that provided fruit and shelter for living creatures. A watcher, a holy heavenly messenger, ordered it cut down. The stump and roots were to remain, bound with iron and bronze, while the person represented by the tree received a beast’s heart for seven times. The announcement explained its purpose: the living must know that the Most High rules human kingdoms and gives authority to whomever He chooses (Daniel 4:4-17).
Daniel understood that the tree represented Nebuchadnezzar. He was troubled and wished the dream concerned the king’s enemies instead. Yet his concern did not lead him to conceal the warning. The king would be driven from human society and live among the beasts until he learned that heaven rules. The preserved stump meant his kingdom would be restored after that humbling (Daniel 4:19-26).
Daniel urged him to turn from sin by doing right and showing mercy to the poor (Daniel 4:27). A change in royal language would not be enough if people continued to suffer under his wrongdoing. The king needed to change how he treated them. Daniel could care about a ruler who had inflicted terrible harm and still tell him what God required. His warning was neither flattery nor delight in the humiliation to come.
Twelve months later, Nebuchadnezzar was walking about his palace when he credited Babylon’s greatness to his own power and majesty (Daniel 4:28-30). He had indeed accomplished much, but workers had built with materials he did not create, and he depended on strength and time he could not give himself. Daniel had already told him that God granted his kingdom. His boast claimed glory without acknowledging that dependence. The year’s delay had given him time to respond; it had not canceled the warning.
The sentence came while he was still speaking. His kingdom departed from him, he was driven from human society, and he lived exposed to the weather, eating grass while his hair and nails grew long (Daniel 4:31-33). Daniel describes a judgment appointed by God, with a stated cause and purpose. The account does not give us enough clinical information to assign a modern psychiatric diagnosis.
I understand the duration as likely seven years, which is the traditional reading and fits the prolonged condition Daniel describes. The Aramaic expression itself names periods of time without specifying years. God had appointed the term and promised restoration; Nebuchadnezzar could not shorten it by royal decree.
At the end of the appointed period, the king lifted his eyes to heaven and his understanding returned. He blessed the Most High, acknowledged His everlasting dominion, and confessed that no one could restrain His hand. His counselors returned, and his kingdom and honor were restored with added majesty. The king now praised the truth and justice of God’s works and warned from experience that God can bring down those who walk in pride.
Was Nebuchadnezzar genuinely saved? His public confession gives strong evidence of humbling and reasonable grounds to see personal faith in God. Scripture does not expressly say he was born again, however, and his earlier true acknowledgments had been followed by further rebellion. I would neither dismiss this confession nor treat it as a complete account of his spiritual condition. God humbled him, restored his understanding and kingdom, and received public praise in place of the boast for which he had been judged.
Babylon Passed, but God’s Purpose Continued
Nebuchadnezzar died in 562 BC after a reign of about forty-three years. His son and successor, Evil-Merodach, is known as Amel-Marduk in Babylonian records. Jeremiah closes with an account of the exiles and the kindness this later king showed Jehoiachin:
Now it came to pass in the thirty-seventh year of the captivity of Jehoiachin king of Judah, in the twelfth month, on the twenty-fifth day of the month, that Evil-Merodach king of Babylon, in the first year of his reign, lifted up the head of Jehoiachin king of Judah and brought him out of prison. And he spoke kindly to him and gave him a more prominent seat than those of the kings who were with him in Babylon. So Jehoiachin changed from his prison garments, and he ate bread regularly before the king all the days of his life. And as for his provisions, there was a regular ration given him by the king of Babylon, a portion for each day until the day of his death, all the days of his life.
Jehoiachin had lost his throne and spent years in captivity. Evil-Merodach released him from prison, spoke kindly to him, and gave him a place of honor among the captive kings, with a regular provision for his needs. I see in his elevation a sign of hope for David’s line while Judah remained in exile. Nebuchadnezzar had died, but God’s purpose for His people had not ended with the man who conquered them.
Other kings followed before Babylon fell. Nabonidus was king at the empire’s end, while Belshazzar exercised royal authority in Babylon. Daniel 5 calls Nebuchadnezzar Belshazzar’s father, using a word that can extend to an ancestor or predecessor rather than requiring a biological father. At Belshazzar’s feast, the earlier king’s humiliation became evidence against a ruler who knew what had happened and still refused to humble himself:
But when his heart was lifted up, and his spirit was hardened in pride, he was deposed from his kingly throne, and they took his glory from him. Then he was driven from the sons of men, his heart was made like the beasts, and his dwelling was with the wild donkeys. They fed him with grass like oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till he knew that the Most High God rules in the kingdom of men, and appoints over it whomever He chooses. "But you his son, Belshazzar, have not humbled your heart, although you knew all this. And you have lifted yourself up against the Lord of heaven. They have brought the vessels of His house before you, and you and your lords, your wives and your concubines, have drunk wine from them. And you have praised the gods of silver and gold, bronze and iron, wood and stone, which do not see or hear or know; and the God who holds your breath in His hand and owns all your ways, you have not glorified."
Daniel reminded Belshazzar of the power God had given Nebuchadnezzar and the judgment that removed it (Daniel 5:18-21). Belshazzar had not been left ignorant. He nevertheless profaned the temple vessels, praised lifeless gods, and failed to honor the God who held his breath. That night he was killed and his kingdom passed to the Medes and Persians (Daniel 5:30-31). Later, Cyrus permitted the exiles to return. The empire that had carried them away could not make their captivity permanent or thwart God’s purpose.
Nebuchadnezzar’s life also gives me reason to consider how I account for my own success. Ability, property, and a responsible position can be received with gratitude. I misuse them when I act as though I owe nothing to God or to the people whose work helped me. If an employee’s labor has contributed to my success while I have withheld fair treatment or proper credit, modest language will not repair the wrong. Repentance needs to change my conduct toward that person. The studies on the pride of men and true humility examine that response more fully.
The everlasting King to whom Daniel’s prophecy directs us is Jesus Christ, the eternal Son, fully God and fully man, born of a virgin and without sin. He willingly gave Himself to be slain as the perfect sacrifice for our sins. His atonement rests on His perfection and voluntary self-offering. Wicked men inflicted His bodily suffering and death. Through His shed blood and death, He completed His saving sacrifice before His burial, then rose bodily from the grave. The Father did not punish, curse, abandon, strike, bruise, or pour wrath on Jesus. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit acted in unity to redeem us.
Christ died for the whole world, and God’s offer of salvation is genuine for every person even though people can resist it. Whoever repents and believes in Jesus is forgiven, declared righteous before God, and born again as a new creation. The Holy Spirit lives in that believer and seals him permanently, so his salvation is eternally secure. Obedience neither earns that salvation nor keeps us saved. Nor does security excuse lawlessness or make a Christian label proof of genuine new birth. The King who will bring rebellious kingdoms to an end now offers mercy to proud sinners.
My Final Thoughts
Nebuchadnezzar received power to rule other kings, yet he could not make himself independent of God. He was accountable for the people harmed by his decisions, and Daniel’s warning called for more than a change in how he described himself. I want to recognize what God has entrusted to me and use it faithfully, giving credit and showing mercy where pride would claim an entitlement. The faithful exiles also remind me that no human authority can claim the worship that belongs to God. Babylon’s demands passed with its empire. Christ’s kingdom will never be destroyed.