Daniel 2:3-4

‘And the king said to them, “I have dreamed a dream, and my spirit is troubled to know the dream.” Then spoke the Chaldeans to the king in Aramaic, “O king live for ever, tell your servants the dream and we will show the interpretation.”

At first all seemed to be going smoothly. They had been here before. The king had had a dream. It was greatly upsetting him and preying on his mind. And he wanted to know what it meant. They informed him that all he had to do was tell them the dream and they would then interpret it for him. ‘The Chaldeans' probably here represents the whole body, for it was a name applied to the wise men of Babylon (or else they were acting as spokesmen).

It has been argued that the term ‘Chaldeans' was at this time an ethnic term and would not have been applied in this way. As mentioned above the first external mention of ‘Chaldeans' in a similar way to this is in Herodotus a hundred years later. But he did then give the inference that they had been around for a very long time. Indeed we can see how easily the name could have arisen. Wise men, magicians, soothsayers and enchanters probably came to the court of Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar from far and wide, once their power was established. It is easy therefore to see how the native born wise men could have banded together and have been called ‘the Chaldeans', claiming further superiority on the grounds that they were priests of Marduk. They were the native born wise men.

But the king had also been here before. He had seen these men interpret dreams for his father. And he had not been impressed. He wanted to ensure that what he was told would be genuine.

We are obviously not told the full details of the conversations that went on. Possibly there was a bit of to and froing, but in the end the king laid down his position. If he was to believe them they must tell him what his dream was, as well as interpreting it. If they truly had mysterious knowledge, surely they would be able to discover his dream by their enchantments and sorcery.

‘O king live for ever.' A typically polite and advisable way of addressing a Babylonian king, and other kings (1 Kings 1:31; Nehemiah 2:3), compare ‘may Nebo and Merodach give long days and everlasting years to the king of the lands, my lord'.

NOTE.

(Note. It is almost an anti-climax to point out that here the text in Daniel changes from Hebrew to Aramaic, and that from here until the end of chapter 7 the text is in Aramaic. It may be that having moved into Aramaic to simulate the words of the Chaldeans, who would in fact use a different form of Aramaic, and wishing to reveal that the king replied in that same Aramaic, the writer simply continued on in Aramaic, in which he was equally fluent, until the end of the vision in chapter 7, when he was able to declare the final triumph of the people of God over the four empires and the crowning of the Davidic king, the final outcome of the dream in chapter 2.

The six Chapter s do in fact follow an identifiable pattern something like this.

1) A vision of four kingdoms and their final end (chapter 2).

2) Faithfulness in conflict with false religion and subsequent miraculous deliverance - the three friends (chapter 3).

3) Judgment declared on the king of Babylon (Nebuchadnezzar) and its consequence (chapter 4).

4) Judgment declared on the king of Babylon (Belshazzar) and its consequence (chapter 5).

5) Faithfulness in conflict with false religion and subsequent miraculous deliverance - Daniel (chapter 6).

6) A vision of four kingdoms and their final end (chapter 7).

This section might well have been put together by Daniel prior to the whole.

Perhaps he then felt that Hebrew was a better language to use for the remainder of the prophecies as they more directly related to Israel. From chapter 8 the persecutions of Anitochus Epiphanes are stressed, and the prophetic dealings are with Israel in Palestine, whereas chapter 1-7 refer to life in Babylon, and the prophetic sections are more universal. Perhaps he also saw Chapter s 2-7 as dealing with the history as unfolded in chapter 2, God's dealings with the wild beasts, resulting in the triumph over them of the people of God, and chapter 8 onwards as beginning another way of looking at things, looking at history mainly from the point of view of the final future of Israel following on the triumph over the beasts in chapter 7.

End of note).