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<p>We meet with a great difficulty in the date of this story; it is said to be in the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, <a class="bibleref" title="Dan.2.1" href="/passage/?search=Dan.2.1">Dan. 2:1</a>. Now Daniel was carried to Babylon in his first year, and, it should seem, he was three years under tutors and governors before he was presented to the king, <a class="bibleref" title="Dan.1.5" href="/passage/?search=Dan.1.5">Dan. 1:5</a>. How then could this happen in <i>the second year</i>? Perhaps, though three years were appointed for the education of other children, yet Daniel was so forward that he was taken into business when he had been but one year at school, and so in the second year he became thus considerable. Some make it to be the second year after he began to reign alone, but the fifth or sixth year since he began to reign in partnership with his <i>father</i>. Some read it, <i>and in the second year</i>, (the second after Daniel and his fellows stood before the king), <i>in the kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar</i>, or <i>in his reign</i>, this happened; as Joseph, in the second year after his skill in dreams, showed and expounded Pharaoh’s, so Daniel, in the second year after he commenced master in that art, did this service. I would much rather take it some of these ways than suppose, as some do, that it was in the second year after he had conquered Egypt, which was the thirty-sixth year of his reign, because it appears by what we meet with in Ezekiel, that Daniel was famous both for wisdom and prevalence in prayer long before that; and therefore this passage, or story, which shows how he came to be so eminent for both these must be laid early in Nebuchadnezzar’s reign. Now here we may observe,</p>
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<p class="tab-1">I. The perplexity that Nebuchadnezzar was in by reason of a dream which he had dreamed but had forgotten (<a class="bibleref" title="Dan.2.1" href="/passage/?search=Dan.2.1">Dan. 2:1</a>): <i>He dreamed dreams</i>, that is, a dream consisting of divers distinct parts, or which filled his head as much as if it had been many dreams. Solomon speaks of a <i>multitude of dreams</i>, strangely incoherent, in which <i>there are divers vanities</i>, <a class="bibleref" title="Eccl.5.7" href="/passage/?search=Eccl.5.7">Eccl. 5:7</a>. This dream of Nebuchadnezzar’s had nothing in the thing itself but what might be paralleled in many a common dream, in which are often represented to men things as foreign as are here mentioned; but there was something in the impression it made upon him which carried with it an incontestable evidence of its divine original and its prophetic significancy. Note, The greatest of men are not exempt from, nay, they lie most open to, those cares and troubles of mind which disturb their repose in the night, while <i>the sleep of the labouring man is sweet</i> and sound, and the sleep of the sober temperate man free from confused dreams. The abundance of the rich will not suffer them to sleep at all for care, and the excesses of gluttons and drunkards will not suffer them to sleep quietly for dreaming. But this recorded here was not from natural causes. Nebuchadnezzar was a troubler of God’s Israel, but God here troubled him; for he that made the soul can <i>make his sword to approach to it</i>. He had his guards about him, but they could not keep trouble from his spirit. We know not the uneasiness of many that live in great pomp, and, one would think, in pleasure, too. We look into their houses, and are tempted to envy them; but, could we look into their hearts, we should pity them rather. All the treasures and all the delights of the children of men, which this mighty monarch had command of, could not procure him a little repose, when by reason of the trouble of his mind his <i>sleep broke from him</i>. But God <i>gives his beloved sleep</i>, who return to him as their rest.</p>
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<p class="tab-1">II. The trial that he made of his magicians and astrologers whether they could tell him what his dream was, which he had forgotten. They were immediately sent for, to <i>show the king his dreams</i>, <a class="bibleref" title="Dan.2.2" href="/passage/?search=Dan.2.2">Dan. 2:2</a>. There are many things which we retain the impressions of, and yet have lost the images of the things; though we cannot tell what the matter was, we know how we were affected with it; so it was with this king. His dream had slipped out of his mind, and he could not possibly recollect it, but he was confident he should know it if he heard it again. God ordered it so that Daniel might have the more honour, and, in him, the God of Daniel. Note, God sometimes serves his own purposes by putting things out of men’s minds as well as by putting things into their minds. The magicians, it is likely, were proud of their being sent for into the king’s bed-chamber, to give him a taste of their office, not doubting but it would be for their honour. He tells them that he had <i>dreamed a dream</i>, <a class="bibleref" title="Dan.2.3" href="/passage/?search=Dan.2.3">Dan. 2:3</a>. They speak to him in the Syriac tongue, which was then the same with the Chaldee, but now they differ much. And henceforward Daniel uses that language, or dialect of the Hebrew, for the same reason that those words, <a class="bibleref" title="Jer.10.11" href="/passage/?search=Jer.10.11">Jer. 10:11</a>; are in that language because designed to convince the Chaldeans of the folly of their idolatry and to bring them to the knowledge and worship of the true and living God, which the stories of these chapters have a direct tendency to. But <a class="bibleref" title="Dan.8.1-Dan.8.27" href="/passage/?search=Dan.8.1-Dan.8.27">Dan. 8:1-27</a> and forward, being intended for the comfort of the Jews, is written in their peculiar language. They, in their answer, complimented the king with their good wishes, desired him to tell his dream, and undertook with all possible assurance to interpret it, <a class="bibleref" title="Dan.2.4" href="/passage/?search=Dan.2.4">Dan. 2:4</a>. But the king insisted upon it that they must tell him the dream itself, because he had forgotten it and could not tell it to them. And, if they could not do this, they should all be put to death as deceivers (<a class="bibleref" title="Dan.2.5" href="/passage/?search=Dan.2.5">Dan. 2:5</a>), themselves <i>cut to pieces</i> and <i>their houses made a dunghill</i>. If they could, they should be rewarded and preferred, <a class="bibleref" title="Dan.2.6" href="/passage/?search=Dan.2.6">Dan. 2:6</a>. And they knew, as Balaam did concerning Balak, that he was able to <i>promote them to great honour</i>, and give them that <i>wages of unrighteousness</i> which, like him, <i>they loved</i> so dearly. No question therefore that they will do their utmost to gratify the king; if they do not, it is not for want of good-will, but for want of power, Providence so ordering it that the magicians of Babylon might now be as much confounded and put to shame as of old the magicians of Egypt had been, that, how much soever his people were both in Egypt and Babylon vilified and made contemptible, his oracles might in both be magnified and made honourable, by the silencing of those that set up in competition with them. The magicians, having reason on their side, insist upon it that the king must tell them the dream, and then, if they do not tell him the interpretation of it, it is their fault, <a class="bibleref" title="Dan.2.7" href="/passage/?search=Dan.2.7">Dan. 2:7</a>. But arbitrary power is deaf to reason. The king falls into a passion, gives them hard words, and, without any colour of reason, suspects that they could tell him but would not; and instead of upbraiding them with impotency, and the deficiency of their art, as he might justly have done, he charges them with a combination to affront him: <i>You have prepared lying and corrupt words to speak before me</i>. How unreasonable and absurd is this imputation! If th
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<p class="tab-1">III. The doom passed upon all the magicians of Babylon. There is but <i>one decree for them all</i> (<a class="bibleref" title="Dan.2.9" href="/passage/?search=Dan.2.9">Dan. 2:9</a>); they all stand condemned without exception or distinction. The decree has gone forth, they must every man of them be slain (<a class="bibleref" title="Dan.2.13" href="/passage/?search=Dan.2.13">Dan. 2:13</a>), Daniel and his fellows (though they knew nothing of the matter) not excepted. See here, 1. What are commonly the unjust proceedings of arbitrary power. Nebuchadnezzar is here a tyrant in true colours, speaking death when he cannot speak sense, and treating those as traitors whose only fault is that they would serve him, but cannot. 2. What is commonly the just punishment of pretenders. How unrighteous soever Nebuchadnezzar was in this sentence, as to the ringleaders in the imposture, God was righteous. Those that imposed upon men, in pretending to do what they could not do, are now sentenced to death for not being able to do what they did not pretend to.</p>
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