Daniel and the King’s Dream

Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, took the noblest of the Jewish boys and the relatives of their king Zedekiah, who were remarkable for the vigor of their bodies and the beauty of their faces, and handed them over to tutors to be cared for. Some of them he also made eunuchs, as he did with those of other nations whom he had captured in the bloom of youth. He provided their food from his own table, had them instructed in the customs of the country and taught the learning of the Chaldeans; and they had by now trained themselves well enough in the wisdom he had ordered them to study. Among these were four of the family of Zedekiah, of excellent character. One was called Daniel, another Hananiah, another Mishael, and the fourth Azariah. The king of Babylon changed their names and ordered them to use others: Daniel he called Belteshazzar; Hananiah, Shadrach; Mishael, Meshach; and Azariah, Abednego. The king esteemed these young men and went on loving them, because of their outstanding natural gifts, their application to learning, and the progress they had made in wisdom. [a]

Now Daniel and his kinsmen had resolved to keep a strict diet, to abstain from the kinds of food that came from the king’s table, and to eat nothing at all that came from living creatures. So Daniel went to Ashpenaz, the eunuch who had charge of them, and asked him to take and use for himself what was brought for them from the king, and to give them legumes and dates to eat, and anything else he liked except the flesh of living creatures; for that was the kind of food they were inclined to, and they despised the other. He replied that he was ready to do what they wanted, but he suspected that the king would find them out by their thin bodies and changed faces, since their bodies and complexions could not help changing with their diet, especially as they would be shown up plainly by the better looks of the other boys, who would eat better; and so they would bring him into danger and get him punished. Even so, they persuaded Ashpenaz, fearful as he was, to give them the food they wanted for ten days as a trial. If their condition did not change, he was to go on in the same way, expecting that they would come to no harm from it afterward; but if he saw them looking thin and worse than the rest, he was to put them back on their former diet. Far from growing worse on this food, they turned out plumper and fuller in body than the rest, so much so that those who ate what came from the king’s table seemed less plump and full, while those with Daniel looked as if they had lived in plenty and in every kind of luxury. From then on Ashpenaz confidently took for himself what the king sent to the boys every day from his supper, as was the custom, and gave them the diet just described. So their souls were pure and fresh for learning, and their bodies were in better condition for hard work; for the souls were not oppressed and weighed down by a variety of foods, nor were the bodies made soft by it. So they readily mastered all the learning of the Hebrews and of the Chaldeans, and Daniel most of all. He was already skilled enough in wisdom, and he applied himself busily to the interpretation of dreams; and God revealed himself to him. [c]

Two years after the destruction of Egypt, King Nebuchadnezzar had a wonderful dream, whose fulfillment God showed him in his sleep; but when he got up from his bed, he forgot the dream. So he sent for the Chaldeans, the magicians and the diviners, told them that he had had a dream and had forgotten what he had seen in it, and ordered them to tell him both what the dream was and what it meant. They said that this was impossible for men to discover, but they promised that if he would describe the dream to them, they would tell him its meaning. At this he threatened them with death unless they told him his dream; and since they admitted that they could not do what they were ordered, he commanded that they all be put to death. When Daniel heard that the king had commanded all the wise men to be put to death, and that he and his three kinsmen were among those in danger, he went to Arioch, the captain of the king’s guard, and asked him why the king had ordered all the wise men, Chaldeans and magicians to be killed. When he learned that the king had had a dream and had forgotten it, and that when they were ordered to tell it to the king they had said they could not, and so had made him angry, he asked Arioch to go in to the king and ask a reprieve for the magicians for one night, putting off their execution that long; for he hoped within that time to learn the dream by praying to God. Arioch told the king what Daniel asked, and the king ordered the execution of the magicians to be delayed until he knew what Daniel’s promise would come to. The young man went home with his kinsmen and begged God all that night to reveal the dream, and so to deliver the magicians and Chaldeans, with whom they themselves were to perish, from the king’s anger, by enabling him to declare the vision and to make plain what the king had seen in his sleep the night before and had forgotten. And God, out of pity for those in danger and out of regard for the wisdom of Daniel, made known to him the dream and its interpretation, so that the king might learn its meaning from him as well. When Daniel had received this knowledge from God, he got up full of joy and told his kinsmen. He made them glad and hopeful that they would now save their lives, which they had despaired of before, when their minds were full of nothing but thoughts of dying. When he had given thanks with them to God, who had pitied their youth, he came to Arioch at daybreak and asked him to bring him to the king, because he would reveal to him the dream he had seen the night before. [e]

When Daniel came in to the king, he first excused himself, saying he did not claim to be wiser than the other Chaldeans and magicians, though he was undertaking to tell the king his dream when they had been entirely unable to; for this did not come from his own skill, or from his having trained his understanding better than the rest. Then he said, “God has had pity on us when we were in danger of death; and when I prayed for my own life and the lives of those of my nation, he revealed to me both the dream and its interpretation. For I was no less concerned for your glory than grieved that you had condemned us to die, when you so unjustly ordered men who were good and excellent in themselves to be put to death, when you laid on them what was entirely beyond the reach of human wisdom, and required of them what is the work of God alone. So, since in your sleep you were anxious about those who would succeed you in ruling the whole world, God wished to show you all those who would reign after you, and for that purpose he showed you this dream. [g]

“You seemed to see a great image standing before you. Its head was of gold, its shoulders and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, and its legs and feet of iron. After that you saw a stone break off from a mountain and fall on the image. It threw the image down and broke it to pieces, and did not let any part of it remain whole; the gold, the silver, the bronze and the iron became finer than flour, and the blast of a violent wind caught it up and scattered it. But the stone grew so great that the whole earth beneath it seemed to be filled with it. This is the dream you saw, and its interpretation is this. The head of gold stands for you and the kings of Babylon who were before you. The hands and shoulders mean that your government will be brought to an end by two kings. But another king, who will come from the west armed with bronze, will destroy that government; and another power, like iron, will put an end to the power of the one before it, and will rule over the whole earth, because of the nature of iron, which is stronger than that of gold, silver or bronze.” Daniel also explained to the king the meaning of the stone. But I do not think it proper to relate it, since I have undertaken to describe things past or present, not things that are to come. Yet if anyone is so eager for the truth that he will not let such points of curiosity go, and cannot restrain his desire to understand the uncertainties of the future and whether they will happen or not, let him read the book of Daniel carefully, which he will find among the sacred writings.

When Nebuchadnezzar heard this and recognized his dream, he was astonished at Daniel’s gift. He fell on his face and greeted Daniel in the way men worship God, and gave orders that sacrifices be offered to him as to a god. Nor was this all: he also gave him the name of his own god, and made him and his kinsmen rulers over his whole kingdom. These kinsmen of his happened to fall into great danger through envy and malice, for they offended the king on the following occasion. He made an image of gold ninety feet high and nine feet wide, and set it up in the great plain of Babylon. When he was about to dedicate the image, he invited the leading men from all the lands under his rule, and commanded them first of all that when they heard the sound of the trumpet they should fall down and worship the image; and he threatened that those who did not would be thrown into a fiery furnace. So when all the rest worshiped the image at the sound of the trumpet, Daniel’s kinsmen, they say, did not, because they would not break the laws of their country. These men were convicted and thrown at once into the fire, but they were saved by divine providence and escaped death in an astonishing way, for the fire did not touch them. I suppose it did not touch them as if it reasoned with itself that they had been thrown into it through no fault of their own, and that it was therefore too weak to burn the young men when they were in it. This was done by the power of God, who made their bodies so far superior to the fire that it could not consume them. This commended them to the king as righteous men and beloved by God, and so they continued in great esteem with him. [i]

A little after this the king saw another vision in his sleep: that he would fall from power and feed among the wild beasts, and that after he had lived this way in the desert for seven years he would recover his power. When he had seen this dream, he called the magicians together again and questioned them about it, asking them to tell him what it meant. None of them could find out the meaning of the dream or explain it to the king; Daniel was the only one who interpreted it. And as he foretold, so it happened. After the king had spent the time just mentioned in the wilderness, with no one daring to seize his kingdom during those seven years, he prayed to God that he might recover his kingdom, and he returned to it. Let no one blame me for writing down everything of this kind as I find it in our ancient books. On that point I have plainly warned those who think me deficient in such matters, or find fault with my handling of them: I told them at the beginning of this history that I intended to do no more than translate the Hebrew books into the Greek language, and I promised to set out those facts without adding anything of my own to them or taking anything away. [m]