v.
31a: "While the word was in the king's mouth…”
o A sober and terrifying
reminder of the relentless potentiality of a sudden and unexpected Divine
judgement! (cf., Dan. 5:30; Job 20:23; Ps. 73:19; Luke 12:20, 17:26-37; Acts 12:22-23;
1Thess. 5:3)
Dan. 5:30: “That same night Belshazzar the
Chaldean king was slain.”
Job 20:23: "When he fills his belly, God
will send His fierce anger on him and will rain it on him while he is eating.”
Ps. 73:19: How they are destroyed in a moment!
They are utterly swept away by sudden terrors!
Luke 12:18-20: And he said, “I will do this: I will
tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain
and my goods. And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up
for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’” But God said to him, ‘Fool! This
night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose
will they be?’
Luke 17:26-30: Just as it was in the days of Noah, so
will it be in the days of the Son of Man. They were eating and drinking and
marrying and being given in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark,
and the flood came and destroyed them all. Likewise, just as it was in the days
of Lot—they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and
building, but on the day when Lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulfur rained
from heaven and destroyed them all—so will it be on the day when the Son of Man
is revealed.”
Luke 17:34-37: I tell you, in that night there will
be two in one bed. One will be taken and the other left. There will be two
women grinding together. One will be taken and the other left.” And they said
to him, “Where, Lord?” He said to them, “Where the corpse is, there the
vultures will gather.”
Acts 12:21-23: On an appointed day Herod put on his
royal robes, took his seat upon the throne, and delivered an oration to them.
And the people were shouting, “The voice of a god, and not of a man!”
Immediately an angel of the Lord struck him down, because he did not give God
the glory, and he was eaten by worms and breathed his last.
1 Thess. 5:3: While they are saying, "Peace and safety!"
then destruction will come upon them suddenly like labor pains upon a woman
with child, and they will not escape.
A Sword of Damocles, dangling by a single
horse’s hair from the ceiling, perpetually hangs over the wicked, who face
imminent destruction at every single moment! Note Jonathan Edward’s warnings
unto the unrepentant:
The God that holds you over the pit of
hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire,
abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: His wrath towards you burns like fire; He
looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; He is of
purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten
thousand times more abominable in His
eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended Him
infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is
nothing but His hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment. It
is to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night;
that you was suffered to awake again in
this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep. And there is no other reason
to be given, why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning,
but that God's hand has held you up. There is no other reason to be given why you
have not gone to hell, since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking His
pure eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending His solemn worship. Yea,
there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not this very
moment drop down into hell.—Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (1741)
v.
31b: “a voice came from heaven…”
o No longer is the King
rebuked by a vision of the night, or by the words of a prophet; now, he must
give audience to the terrifying Voice coming down directly from Heaven!
o Presumably this is the
Voice of God, though some have speculated that this may also have been the
voice of an angel. Note other instances of an audible Voice from Heaven: Matt.
3:17, 17:5; John 12:28; Rev. 1:10, 10:4, 11:12.
v.
31c: “saying…sovereignty has been removed from you…”
o The Voice announces
that all of those things that Nebuchadnezzar values the most—sovereign power,
wealth, kingly authority, majesty, and royal dignity—are now being stripped
from him in one terrible moment!
vv.
32-33: “…and he was driven away from mankind and began eating grass like
cattle…and his nails like birds' claws.”
o See our prior notes on
vv. 15-17, 25-26.
o The King’s condition
has often been likened to a psychological condition known as boanthropy,
in which a person imagines himself to be either a cow or an ox.
o The grotesque physical
changes associated with the king’s condition are probably indicative of the
great length of his incapacitation as a maniac (i.e., seven years)—as opposed
to the supernaturally generated literal metamorphosis that has been proposed by
some commentators.
o The public sign of the king’s
outward madness is indeed a fittingly correspondent Divine judgment for the
veiled insanity of his inward pride and blasphemous attempts to live in a state
of total autonomy from God.
