Daniel 4:37

Nebuchadnezzar's final doxology.

extol or exalt: Psalms 30:1; Psalms 118:28; Psalms 145:1, &c.

truth … judgement cf. Psalms 111:7.

and those that walk in pride, &c. Cf. Ezekiel 17:24; Psalms 18:27; Psalms 75:7; also Proverbs 16:18. Nebuchadnezzar recognizes that the humiliation which he has experienced is a punishment for his pride.

"The Bible always represents to us that pride and arrogant self-confidence are an offence against God. The doom fell on Nebuchadnezzar while the haughty boast was still in the king's mouth. The suddenness of the nemesis of pride is closely paralleled by the scene in the Acts of the Apostles in which Herod Agrippa I. is represented as entering the theatre to receive the deputies of Tyre and Sidon"; and, in spite of the ominous warning, which according to the story in Josephus he had received just before, as accepting the blasphemous adulation of the multitude, and as being stricken immediately by a mortal illness (Acts 20:20-23; Jos. Ant.xiv. viii. 2). "And something like this we see again and again in what the late Bishop Thirlwall called the -irony of history" the cases in which men seem to have been elevated to the very summit of power only to heighten the dreadful precipice over which they immediately fell. He mentions the cases of Persia, which was on the verge of ruin when with lordly arrogance she dictated the peace of Antalcidas; of Boniface VIII., in the Jubilee of 1300, immediately preceding his deadly overthrow; and of Spain, under Philip II., struck down by the ruin of the Armada at the zenith of her wealth and pride. He might have added the instances of Ahab, Sennacherib [cf. Isaiah 10:12-19; Isaiah 10:33-34], Nebuchadnezzar, and Herod Antipas, of Alexander the Great, and of Napoleon" (Farrar, p. 198 f.).

Additional Note on Nebuchadnezzar's madness

The malady from which Nebuchadnezzar is represented as suffering agrees, as Dr Pusey has pointed out (p. 425 ff.), "with the description of a rare sort of disease, called Lycanthropy, from one form of it, of which our earliest notice is in a Greek medical writer of the 4th cent. a.d., in which the sufferer retains his consciousness in other respects, but imagines himself to be changed into some animal, and acts, up to a certain point, in conformity with that persuasion." Persons thus afflicted imagine themselves for instance to be dogs, wolves, lions, cats, cocks, or other animals, and cry or otherwise behave themselves in the manner of these animals. Marcellus (4 cent. a.d.) says, "They who are seized by the kynanthropic or lykanthropic disease, in the month of February go forth by night, imitating in all things wolves or dogs, and until day especially live near tombs." Galen mentions the case of one who crowed, and flapped his arms, imagining himself to be a cock; and many similar cases are on record in modern times. Dr Pusey states that he found no notice of the exact form of the disease with which Nebuchadnezzar was afflicted (which would be Boanthropy); but there seems to be no intrinsic reason why an ox should not be the animal whose nature was thus assumed. A man who imagined himself to be an ox might naturally enough eat grass like an ox; but a perverted appetite, including, in particular, a desire to devour grass, leaves, twigs, &c., is also an independent characteristic of many forms of insanity. At the same time, persons suffering in these ways are often not entirely, or continuously, bereft of their reason; they are at times aware that they are not what they imagine themselves to be; and frequently (as visitors to lunatic asylums sometimes notice) make on many subjects acute and sensible remarks; so that there is no difficulty in supposing that Nebuchadnezzar could, as seems to be represented in Daniel 4:34, have recognized God in prayer even before his reason had wholly returned to him. Dr Pusey refers at some length to the case of Père Surin, who, in exorcising others, fell for many years into a strange malady, in which he believed himself to be possessed, and acted outwardly in the manner of a maniac, and yet remained fully conscious of religious verities, and was inwardly in perfect peace and communion with God.

If therefore it were clear that the narrative in Daniel was the work of a contemporary hand, there does not seem to be any sufficient reason why the account of Nebuchadnezzar's insanity should not be accepted as historical: it is supported by physiological analogies; and the objections that it is not mentioned by other ancient writers, and that his empire would not have been preserved to him during such a long illness, are hardly of a nature to be conclusive; our records of his reign are imperfect [248], and an arrangement may have been made by which the chief courtiers continued to rule in the king's name, as in the similar cases of Charles VI. of France, Christian VII. of Denmark, George III. of England, and Otho of Bavaria, referred to by Dr Farrar (p. 201).

[248] The statement of Berosus (ap. Jos. c. Ap.i. 20) that -falling into a sickness (ἐμπεσὼν εἰς ἀρρωστίαν), he ended his life," is too vague to be regarded as confirmatory of the narrative in Daniel: Berosus uses almost the same expression (ἀρρωστήσας) in speaking (ib.i. 19) of the death of Nabopolassar; besides, it is implied that from this sickness Nebuchadnezzar did not recover.

The question assumes, however, a different complexion, if it be true that the book is a work of the Maccabæan age. We then have no contemporary evidence for the fact; and it becomes an open question, whether it is more than a popular tradition which the writer has followed, and which he has adopted for the purpose of teaching one of the great lessons of his book. Some support is given to this opinion by the curious, though imperfect, parallel quoted by Eusebius (Praep. Evang.ix. 41) from the Assyrian history of Abydenus (Proverbs 2 cent. a.d.): "Megasthenes says that Nebuchadnezzar became stronger than Herakles, and made wars upon Libya and Iberia, and having conquered these countries settled a part of their inhabitants on the right of Pontus. After this, it is said by the Chaldæans, he ascended the roof of his palace, and being possessed by some god or other, cried aloud: -O Babylonians, I, Nebuchadnezzar, announce to you beforehand the coming misfortune, which Bel my ancestor and the Queen Beltis are alike powerless to persuade the Fates to avert. A Persian mule [i.e. Cyrus] will come, having your own deities as his allies [249], and will bring slavery. He who will help him in this undertaking will be Mçdçs [250], the boast of Assyria [251]. Would that, before my citizens were betrayed, some Charybdis or sea might receive him, and utterly extinguish him! or else that, betaking himself elsewhere, he might be driven through the desert, where is no city nor track of man, where wild beasts have their pasture, and birds do roam, and that among rocks and ravines he might wander alone! and that I, before he imagined this, might meet with some happier end!" Having uttered this prophecy, he forthwith disappeared; and Evilmaluruchus [Evil-merodach], his son, succeeded him on the throne."

[249] Cyrus, in his -Cylinder-Inscription," represents himself as led into Babylon by Merodach, the supreme god of Babylon (cf. the Introd. p. xxxi. bottom).

[250] Schrader, following a conjecture of von Gutschmid's, reads -the son of a Median woman," i.e. Nabu-na'id, who certainly made himself unpopular by his neglect of the gods of Babylon, and may well have been regarded as in great measure responsible for its capture by Cyrus.

[251] Used in the sense of Babylonia.

Megasthenes was a contemporary of Seleucus Nicator (b.c. 312 280); but the statements about Nebuchadnezzar's prophecy are made on the authority of the -Chaldaeans." Prof. Be van, following Prof. Schrader [252], points out well the historical significance of the passage, and its bearing on the Biblical narrative. "Obscure as the passage is in some of its details, one part may be regarded as certain, viz. that we have here a popular legend of Babylonian origin, coloured of course by the Greek medium through which it has passed. The prophecy put into the mouth of Nebuchadnezzar evidently refers to the overthrow of the Babylonian empire by Cyrus, the -mule." … The resemblances between the narrative in Daniel and the Babylonian legend can hardly be accidental": in both the king is on the roof of the palace; in the one case a prophetic voice declares to him that he will be driven from men, and have his abode with the beasts of the field, in the other he invokes a similar fate upon his nation's foe. "But to suppose that either narrative has been directly borrowed from the other is impossible. It would appear that of the two, that in Abydenus is on the whole the more primitive. Its local character," notice, for instance, the interest evinced by it in the history of Babylon, "is strongly marked; and it shews no signs of having been deliberately altered to serve a didactic purpose. In Daniel, on the other hand, we find a narrative which contains scarcely anything specifically Babylonian, but which is obviously intended to teach a moral lesson. It is therefore probable that some Babylonian legend on the subject of Nebuchadnezzar had, perhaps in a very distorted form, reached the ears of the author of Daniel, who adapted the story in order to make it a vehicle of religious instruction."

[252] In his Essay on -Nebuchadnezzar's Madness" in the Jahrbücher für Protest. Theol., 1881, p. 618 ff.