Bible Study: Daniel Chapter 2

King Nebuchadnezzar has a dream which freaks him out. He demands that his soothsayers tell him the meaning of the dream and just to make it interesting, they also have to tell him the dream. The king is a bit of a drama queen and declares that if they can do this they will get great riches. If not they will be cut up into little pieces. AND their houses will be made into dunghills. This freaks the magicians out and the king grows impatient with them and declares that they are all to be killed.

Daniel gets wind of this and prays with his cohorts. That night the dream and interpretation are revealed to him by god. He brings the dream and interpretation to the king, who is so overwhelmed by the revelation that he makes Daniel and friends a chief advisor and governors respectively.

The dream itself is about a large statue made of increasingly inferior materials with gold at the top (for Nebuchadnezzar) and working down to clay. A huge stone crushes the whole thing. The basic gist is that Nebuchadnezzar is a great king and those following will be less so. Essentially its a forecast of the history of the region.

Thoughts:

- The twist of having the soothsayers tell him the dream as well as the interpretation is brilliant. It reminds me of the snarky observation I heard about clairvoyants once: if they are so good why do they have to ask your name when they first meet you.

- I'm hoping that this particular vision is not the *big* prophecy, because it's so vague that just about any series of events could be mapped to it. I dimly remember that there are more to come.


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