Daniel 2:1 – “Dreams”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

¹And in the year of second to the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar dreamed dreams and his spirit was disturbed and his sleep was upon him.

My, my. This verse is so full of interesting observations. I’ll try to be brief!

First, two exegetically significant observations – as usual, the antagonists explode over the statement that this occurs in the second year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign. They all whine and cry over the fact that Daniel and his friends were in a three year training program and then exclaim it makes no sense this could have occurred in the second year, since the result is Daniel and his friends’ promotion to significant positions. “Surely they would have to have completed their training before they could reasonably be expected to have received positions!” they exclaim.

As I explained in my last post, such objections only betray the ignorance of those who think they’ve found a fault in God’s Word. As I observed before, one has to be very careful when dealing with ancient people’s timelines. They viewed and recorded time very differently than we do. And may I point out that the reference to the three year training program was recorded only a few verses before? If this reference to the second year created such a glaring inconsistency, it would have been addressed back then. But it didn’t. Daniel himself and the people he was writing to saw no contradiction or inconsistency. His words made perfect sense to them. Our problem is we don’t think like them, nor do we have the immediate facts they had. It is possible Nebuchadnezzar served a co-regency with his father Nabopolassar for a year or two and this reckoning is starting with the period of his independent reign.

It is also possible there is no contradiction at all. As I said before, sometimes ancient peoples didn’t count the first year of a king’s reign. In other words, they didn’t start their reckoning until the New Year actually began. If Daniel’s training started during this “uncounted” period before the New Year, and if the dream occurred very soon after Daniel’s graduation, his “three-year” training program could have then quite logically been completed in the “second” (reckoned) year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign.

The bottom-line is we don’t know, but they obviously did. It is all very interesting to ponder how it fits together but I would maintain it is the heights of ignorance and arrogance to think the chronology somehow casts doubt on the veracity of this book or the Bible itself.

The second exegetically significant observation is in the final words of the verse. These words are usually translated something like, “… his mind was troubled and he could not sleep.” As my translation indicates, it literally says, “…and his sleep was upon him.” Those words don’t immediately make sense to us. What does it mean “his sleep was upon him?” It seems to me if Daniel wanted to tell us that the king couldn’t sleep, he could have said something like, “his sleep left him.” I would rather suggest the idea is the exact opposite, that his sleep was “upon” him in the sense that he did in fact keep on sleeping. In other words, perhaps he awoke with some vivid apprehension of what he had dreamed but promptly fell back asleep. This would possibly explain why he will then ask the magicians to tell him what the dream was – as his own memory is very vague. At any rate, that is the understanding I will assume to be true – that he awoke enough to be troubled but then went back to sleep so that, in the morning when he awoke, he still felt disturbed but couldn’t remember exactly what it was he had dreamed.

On to more practical observations. I think it is interesting to observe the man himself. He is a king. And not just any king – he is the king of the most powerful nation on earth. He is surrounded by wealth and power and no doubt every possible delight any young king could ask for. But he still has to sleep. And he can have “bad” dreams that disturb him. Interesting – all the armed guards around him and the softest bed under him cannot protect him from his own humanity. He is, in the end, just a man. Just like us. Great and small, rich and poor, male and female, we are all just people.

Somewhat along these lines, though, it is worth observing that “greatness” not only does not protect us from our humanity, it actually often makes things worse! Eccl 5:12 observes, “The sleep of a working man is sweet … but the abundance of the rich permits him no sleep.” In Esther 6:1, we find another great king whose sleep is disturbed. The fact is that “greatness” carries with it cares and troubles that are spared to the rest of us. Joan and I used to laugh when we left the house on vacation, knowing we didn’t really have to “worry” about someone breaking into our house. We had nothing worth stealing! How different it would be for someone living in a palatial mansion! Poverty has its advantages! People occasionally ask me if I’m looking to become a principal in our company. I tell them no, that I will certainly do what duty requires, but that I maintain no delusions about the “glories” of leadership. I am quite content to just do my job and let someone else lose sleep over all the worries of actually running a business. Nebuchadnezzar’s troubled sleep reminds us that “greatness” often comes at a cost.

Finally – and this where I really have to force myself to be brief – I note that the Lord is here communicating great truth through a dream. As I pondered this verse, I was amazed to recall how many times in the Bible the Lord communicated to people through dreams. Joseph immediately comes to mind, with his own dreams, the butler and cupbearer’s, and the Pharaoh’s. There was Abimelech warned in a dream about Isaac. God came to Solomon in a dream. He spoke to Joseph, Mary’s husband in a dream about her pregnancy, then warning them to flee to Egypt, directing them to return to Israel, then warning them away from returning to Judea, so they settled in Nazareth. Pilate’s wife was warned about Jesus in a dream and Peter was instructed by the dream of the sheet full of creatures. And this is only a portion of it all.

It’s also interesting that the Lord spoke not only to good people but also to evil kings. That would seem peculiar to us, but there it is.

I would observe that our God is a great Communicator. The opening verses of the Bible record, “And the Lord said, ‘Let there be …’” “The Lord said.” From the very beginning, He was speaking. The Bible ends with Him still speaking, saying, “Yes, I am coming soon.” The entire Bible is God’s Word – God speaking. “The heavens declare the glory of God.” And Jesus is “the Word of God.” The gods people imagine are often silent. The Deists thought the Creator set the universe in motion, then disappeared. Sometimes we feel as if “the heavens are brass.” But the truth is our God is the Great Communicator. If we don’t hear Him, the fault is of necessity on our part, not His.

This reference to dreams in particular, makes one wonder why, if He used dreams so extensively in the ancient world, why He doesn’t seem to today. I think the answer is almost entirely addressed in Hebrews 1:1,2: “In the past God spoke to our fathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days He has spoken to us by his Son …” Although the Lord can communicate any way He wants any time He wants, yet Jesus Himself is the very Word of God. All those communications in the Old Testament were just parts and pieces of God revealing Himself to man. They were but “shadows of things to come.” The fullness of God’s revelation of Himself to man is not given in dreams or visions, but in the Living Word Himself. The ancient peoples and the Jews in particular had only the words of the prophets, their dreams and visions, to reveal God to them. But we have God Himself in the person of our Lord Jesus. For Nebuchadnezzar to have this prophetic dream, for Daniel to interpret it, and all the rest, might seem “great,” the fact is that what we have is far greater. We see Jesus.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that “dreams” might be a very captivating topic but we have something far better. We have the Living Word. God can choose to speak any way He wants any time He wants, but we need to keep our gaze fixed on Jesus. For myself, I believe in the sufficiency of the Scriptures, the doctrine that the Bible as we have it is the completed revelation of God and we need not look elsewhere for truth. But even having said that, we ought not be somehow content to know the written Word. It is there to point us to the Living Word. Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.” Jesus answered, “Philip, have I been with you so long and you still don’t know Me?”

Jesus is “the brightness of God’s glory, and the express image of His Person…”

Daniel was a privileged fellow to live in the age of dreams. But what you and I have is far better!