The biblical book of Daniel delights in narrating the temporary collapse of the Babylonian king who held the Judaean exiles in captivity. Simultaneously, its author asks the reader to learn from the royal demise. If this kind of thing can happen to a pagan king, we are urged to consider, it can happen to anyone.
While the words were still in the king’s mouth, a voice came from heaven: ‘O King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is declared: The kingdom has departed from you! You shall be driven away from human society, and your dwelling shall be with the animals of the field. You shall be made to eat grass like oxen, and seven times shall pass over you, until you have learned that the Most High has sovereignty over the kingdom of mortals and gives it to whom he will.’ Immediately the sentence was fulfilled against Nebuchadnezzar. He was driven away from human society, ate grass like oxen, and his body was bathed with the dew of heaven, until his hair grew as long as eagles’ feathers and his nails became like birds’ claws. (Daniel 4.31–33 NRSV)
The king goes animal before us.
If he had died out there—nails curled double, licking dew from the grass—we might have understood that bad things happen to powerful people, especially when their power has been turned against our people. And turned the page.
Yet the writer wants more than this from us. For us.
In his hands, Nebuchadnezzar recovers and speaks almost like an Israelite sage about truth that undergirds the life of even those who live out our days in the shadows cast by large events.
When that period was over, I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my reason returned to me. I blessed the Most High, and praised and honored the one who lives forever. For his sovereignty is an everlasting sovereignty, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation. All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does what he wills with the host of heaven and the inhabitants of the earth. There is no one who can stay his hand or say to him, “What are you doing?” At that time my reason returned to me; and my majesty and splendor were restored to me for the glory of my kingdom. My counselors and my lords sought me out, I was reestablished over my kingdom, and still more greatness was added to me. Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, for all his works are truth, and his ways are justice; and he is able to bring low those who walk in pride.’ (Daniel 4.34–37 NRSV)
The capacity to bring down the arrogant lies near to the core of the biblical portrayal of YHWH. This divine penchant for assertive demotion of the proud is no afterthought, no marginal anecdote at the edge of a far grander narrative.
The book of Daniel places it among the praiseworthy features of Israel’s God. Nebuchadnezzar, having suffered the force of YHWH’s vigorous stewardship of reality, mentions it in his virtual hymn, even if the pagan king cannot bring himself to be more particular about the identify of Daniel’s dream-revealing deity than the terms ‘Most High’ and ‘King of Heaven’ allow.
Tinpot dictators and imperial despots learn this truth, eventually. But so do little tyrants in the alleys, homes, and marketplaces where we smaller people live.
Indeed, so do we, when the preternatural seductiveness of arrogance eventually claims our wandering hearts. To be as fortunate as Nebuchadnezzar, who survived his own hubris and its judgement long enough to name the thing and recognize its divine Adversary, is a blessing for all recovering self-deifiers who get that far. The discerning reader recognizes a little bit of the Nebuchadnezzar in himself and, so, mines the wisdom in the story. When he does, he sings his praise in an accent that sounds faintly, momentarily, Babylonian.
