Daniel 2

Daniel 2:1-23

Boice commenting on this verse writes that "If God does not control our lives—from the actions of kings and others in positions of power to the most minute circumstances—then everything in life is uncertain (Ed: We are left in the hands of "fate" or "chance"). We are victims of circumstances, and whatever happens will happen. Que sera, sera! But if God is sovereign, as the Bible declares Him to be, and if He is our God—if the promises He makes and the actions He takes are certain of fulfillment—then we can be confident of the future and know that we will be able to live our lives in a way that will please God. (Boice, J. M. Daniel: An Expositional Commentary. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books) Gleason Archer - Why does Daniel refer to soothsayer-priests as Chaldeans? Daniel 2:2 first introduces the “Chaldeans” (Heb. Kasdim) as a class of astrologer-priests, along with the “magicians, the conjurers, and the sorcerers.” Obviously there is nothing ethnic about this use of the term. From the ethnical standpoint, Nebuchadnezzar himself and most of his political and military leaders were “Chaldeans.” Some have argued that this nonethnic use of the term in Daniel 2:2 and elsewhere reflects a confusion in the understanding of the late author of the Book of Daniel, who probably wrote around 165 B.C. This theory is completely shattered, however, by the fact that the real author of “Daniel” (namely, Daniel himself, writing around 530 B.C.) also uses Kasdim in an ethnic way. In Daniel 5:30 he refers to Belshazzar as “the king of the Chaldeans” (Aramaic malkāʾ Ḵaśdāʾẹ̄). (Probably the certain “Chaldean men” [guḇrîn Kaśdaʾîn] in Daniel 3:8, who were the accusers of Daniel’s three friends, were high government officials rather than soothsayer-priests [so Brown-Driver-Briggs, Lexicon, p. 1098].) Such a varying use of the term cannot be explained by a theory of late authorship. The fact of the matter is that the author of Daniel used this name in two different senses: (1) as astrological, (2) as ethnical. How could this have come about? Is there any explanation for these homonyms? Yes, there is, but it is to be found in the handing down of an ancient term through three languages. As Robert Dick Wilson of Princeton pointed out (Studies in the Book of Daniel, a discussion of the historical questions, Series 1 [New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1917]), the Sumerian combination Gal-du would have meant “Master Builder,” a title given to those astrologer-priests who drew star charts by dividing the visible stars up into little rooms on a chart resembling the floor-plan of a house. The term Gal-du so appears in a tablet dated in the fourteenth year of Shamash-shumukin of Babylon (668–648 B.C.). Confusion of Kal-du (the Akkadian spelling of Sumerian Gal-du) with the name of the Chaldean nation came about as follows: That name, originally Kasdu or Kasdu later came to be pronounced Kaldu in the Babylonian dialect of Akkadian. This resulted from a modification of a sibilant to an l before a dental; thus, the preposition ištu (“out of”) was pronounced ultu in later Babylonian; ašṭur (“I wrote”) was changed to altur. The final stage came in the rise of the Neo-Babylonian Empire under Nabopolassar and his son Nebuchadnezzar; for in this time of national resurgence (having thrown off the Assyrian yoke at last), they tried to restore their literary language to its earlier classical form. This meant that all the sibilants that had become l before dental consonants had to be changed back to their original sibilants. It was only natural, therefore, for the Kaldu, which originally came from Kal-du (Gal-du), to be unhistorically changed to Kasdu (the plural of which was Kasdi, Hebrew Kasdim, Aramaic Kasdin, or Ḵaśdāʾē in the emphatic state). This term thus fell together with the ethnic Kaldu (plural Kaldi), which had come originally from Kasdu. (Note that the Greeks picked up the name before the Neo-Babylonian reform, for they called the nation Chaldaioi, whence comes our English translation “Chaldeans.”) (See page 289 in Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties) Daniel 2:3 The king said to them, "I had a dream and my spirit is anxious to understand the dream." Da 2:1 Ge 40:8 41:15 Daniel Resources - Multiple Sermons and Commentaries Anxious - Same word in Da 2:1. Donald Campbell - The interpretation of royal dreams was an art in which they were skilled. They even had manuals that listed various symbols that appeared in dreams, along with their probable meanings. There was just one problem-they had to know what the dream was! (Daniel: God's Man in a Secular Society - borrow same book different title Daniel, decoder of dreams) Daniel 2:4 Then the Chaldeans spoke to the king in Aramaic: "O king, live forever! Tell the dream to your servants, and we will declare the interpretation." in Aramaic: Ge 31:47 Ezra 4:7 Isa 36:11 O king - Da 3:9 4:19 5:10 6:6,21 1Sa 10:24 1Ki 1:25,31 Ne 2:3 Mt 21:9 Mk 11:9,10 tell: Da 4:7 5:8 Ge 41:8 Isa 44:25 Daniel Resources - Multiple Sermons and Commentaries THE TIMES OF THE GENTILES Luke 21:24+ and they will fall by the edge of the sword, and will be led captive into all the nations; and Jerusalem will be trampled under foot by the Gentiles until (expression of time) the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. Most scholars believe these "times" began when the Gentile Babylonians "trampled under foot" the city of Jerusalem and the Temple of God and will end when Messiah (See also Messiah - Anointed One and Hebrew mashiach/masiyah - Anointed One) returns in Rev 19:11-16+, as the "Stone" that smashes and puts to an end forever all Gentile powers. ?And all God's children shout "Hallelujah!" (cf Rev 19:1 Rev 19:3 Rev 19:4 Rev 19:6+) In Aramaic (Da 2:4KJV = "Syriack") - This was the lingua franca or common language of the Assyrian Empire as the diplomatic and commercial language because of its comparatively simple alphabetic script (cp 2Ki 18:26 which took place in about 701BC indicates few Jews could understand it). It's use parallels Daniel's prophecies that lay out the history of all subsequent Gentile empires (Da 2:4-Da 7:28). In Da 8:1 through the end of the book Daniel returns to the Hebrew language. It is interesting to note that Aramaic became more familiar to the Jews in captivity than Hebrew so that after they were released from captivity and a remnant returned to rebuild the Temple, Nehemiah records that "they read from the book, from the law of God, translating to give the sense so that they understood the reading." (Neh 8:8) Note that some commentators favor "translate" (NAS) to mean “to break down” the text into its parts so that the people could understand it, much like a preacher would do today in expository preaching of the Word. In any event we know that by the time of Jesus' day, Aramaic was the language in which He usually conversed.