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Daniel 2

Book of ChroniclesHebrew Bible TranslationJewish Publication Society Bible

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This is a biblical narrative passage from the Book of Daniel (chapter 2), part of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, belonging to the apocalyptic literary tradition. The text recounts how the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar demands that his court wise men not only interpret his troubling dream but first reveal its content without being told it — on pain of death — a task they declare impossible for any human. The Jewish captive Daniel, facing execution alongside Babylon's wise men, prays with his companions and receives the dream's content and meaning through divine revelation, which he then presents to the king. The dream itself depicts a towering statue made of successively inferior metals (gold, silver, bronze, iron, clay), representing a sequence of world empires, all ultimately shattered by a supernaturally cut stone that grows to fill the earth — interpreted as God's eternal kingdom supplanting all human kingdoms. The passage's distinctive theological argument is that true wisdom and prophetic knowledge belong exclusively to the God of Israel, not to any pagan divinatory system, and that history's imperial succession is divinely ordained and will culminate in divine sovereignty. Daniel's success earns him high office in Babylon and prompts Nebuchadnezzar's acknowledgment of Israel's God as supreme — a recurring motif of vindication for the faithful exile.

Daniel 2

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