The Tree Cut Down · Four Beasts

In context

Daniel 4 is Nebuchadnezzar’s letter “to all the peoples, nations, and languages” (Daniel 4:1). He dreams of a great tree cut down to its stump, and Daniel tells him the tree is the king: he will be driven out to live with the animals “until you know that the Most High rules in the kingdom of men” (4:10–25). A year later, as he boasts, “Is not this great Babylon, which I have built,” it happens; when the time is over he lifts his eyes to heaven and praises “the King of heaven” (4:29–37).

Chapter 7 is set in Belshazzar’s first year. Daniel dreams of four great animals from the sea, like a lion, a bear and a leopard, and a fourth with iron teeth and ten horns. He sees the Ancient of Days and “one like a son of man” coming “with the clouds of the sky,” given a kingdom “that will not be destroyed” (7:1–14). Jesus used these words of himself: “the Son of Man… coming on the clouds of the sky” (Matthew 26:64).

In chapter 8, by the river Ulai at Susa, Daniel sees a ram and a goat, and Gabriel names them “the kings of Media and Persia” and “the king of Greece” (8:2, 16–21). Readers have long differed over the kingdoms and times in these visions.