The Writing on the Wall

Among those taken to Babylon were Daniel, who became a prophet–a dream interpreter–to Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar had dreamed of

a large statue–an enormous, dazzling statue, awesome in appearance. The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay. … A rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were all broken to pieces and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer. The wind swept them away without leaving a trace. But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth. (Daniel 2:31-35)

Daniel’s explanation of the dream has been described as the world’s first history. The head of the statue represented the contemporary empire of Babylon, under Nebuchadnezzar, “the king of kings”. After him would be another kingdom “inferior to yours”; this was probably the Median empire. The “third kingdom, one of bronze, will rule over the whole earth”; this was the Persian empire led by Cyrus the Great. “Finally, there will be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron … it will crush and break all the others … this will be a divided kingdom; yet it will have some of the strength of iron in it, even as you saw iron mixed with clay.” Some saw in this the conquests of Alexander the Great and the resulting dynasties of Syria (the Seleucids) and Egypt (the Ptolemies), but the Greek empire was fleeting. The Roman empire, however, was very much an empire of iron, which grew to encompass Europe and Asia minor, eventually dividing into east (Byzantium) and west (the Holy Roman Empire).

Nebuchadnezzar was impressed by Daniel’s explanation, but may have taken the wrong message from it. His next act was to commission an enormous gold statue of himself. The end for Babylon, however, came under his successors. When Belshazzar was enjoying an enormous banquet he had held in his own honour, a hand appeared, and wrote on the wall the words: mene, mene, tekel, parsin. Daniel was called to explain: Your days are numbered; you have been weighed on the scales and you have been found wanting; your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.

Belshazzar took the news surprisingly well, appointing Daniel the third highest ruler in the kingdom. But the appointment was short-lived. Belshazzar was killed the same night, and Darius the Mede took the kingdom.