Daniel 2:31-35

The Vision of Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 2:31).

“You, O king, saw, and behold a great image. This image which was mighty and whose brightness was spectacular, stood before you. And its aspect was dreadful. As for this image his head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, his legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. You saw until a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image on his feet which were of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken in pieces together, and became chaff like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors, and the wind carried them away so that no place was found for them. And the stone that smote the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.”

The account really needs no amplification. As he lay sleeping suddenly he envisioned a great image. Chapter 3 suggests that he would see it as an idol, one such as kings made to glorify themselves. In his waking life he had seen such images before, for multi-metalled images were no new thing. But in his dream this image was huge, dwarfing mankind. It was an impressive god indeed. Its splendour was in order to make him fear, but it was also to flatter Nebuchadnezzar, especially its head of gold. But its significant factor as he gazed at it was that what began at the top as gold slowly deteriorated section by section, to baser and baser metals, until it became metal and clay, and clearly unstable. Metal could make a sound foundation. Building clay could make a sound foundation. But the two together were incompatible. And then came the shattering end when a mighty boulder, cut out without hands, smashed the feet of the image, with the result that the whole image disintegrated, crashing down and turning to powder. Whereat not only its site, but also the whole earth, became filled by the boulder which became a great mountain.

The picture is vividly described. And the result of the crashing stone was that the whole of the image from top to bottom was ‘broken in pieces together, and became chaff like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors, and the wind carried them away so that no place was found for them.' It was as though all the materials from the gold downwards, were turned into chaff on the threshingfloor, what remained once the good seed had been taken away, waiting to be blown away by the regular winds which cleared the threshing floor of its chaff. And there would be nothing left of them. They had nowhere to go.

Notice carefully that no numbers are mentioned. If we start to introduce numbers we are not properly interpreting the vision. We are reading into it what is not there.