Daniel and the dreams of Nebuchadnezzar at the court of Babylon
The Book of Daniel: the statue of gold, silver, bronze and iron, the great tree cut down and the vision of the four beasts rising out of the sea.
If Joseph is the dream interpreter at the court of Egypt, Daniel is the one at the court of Babylon. The biblical book that bears his name presents him as a young man deported from Jerusalem, educated in the sciences of the Chaldeans and given the Babylonian name Belteshazzar. His fame arises precisely from his ability to explain the dreams of King Nebuchadnezzar, which the magicians, astrologers and soothsayers of the kingdom cannot understand.
The statue with feet of clay
In the second chapter the king has a dream that deeply troubles him, but he demands that the wise men tell him not only its meaning but the very content of the dream, threatening them with death. It is an impossible test, which only Daniel passes, after praying and receiving the revelation in a night vision.
The king had seen an enormous statue: its head of gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron and its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. A stone, cut from the mountain without the help of human hands, struck the feet and ground the whole statue to dust, then became a mountain that filled the earth.
Daniel explains that the metals represent successive kingdoms, from the most precious to the most fragile, and that the stone is a kingdom willed by God and destined to last for ever. The expression «a giant with feet of clay», still used today for a power that seems invincible but is fragile, derives from this story. Ancient commentators recognised in them, in turn, Babylon, the Medes, the Persians and the Greeks.
The tree cut down
In the fourth chapter, written in the form of a proclamation by Nebuchadnezzar himself, the king dreams of a towering tree that reaches the sky and feeds all living creatures. A heavenly being orders it to be cut down, leaving however its stump in the earth, bound with chains of iron and bronze. Daniel interprets the tree as the king himself, destined to be driven away from men for seven times until he acknowledges the sovereignty of God.
The story continues with the madness of the king, who lives like an animal in the fields, and with his return to reason. Some scholars believe that tradition attributed to Nebuchadnezzar events originally linked to Nabonidus, the last Babylonian king, who spent a long time in the Arabian oasis of Tayma. A fragmentary text found at Qumran, the so-called Prayer of Nabonidus, seems to support this hypothesis.
From dream to apocalyptic vision
In the second part of the book the roles are reversed: it is Daniel himself who receives dreams and visions, which an angel explains to him. In the seventh chapter he sees four beasts rise from the sea, a lion with eagle's wings, a bear, a leopard with four heads and a monster with ten horns, followed by the appearance of an Ancient of Days on a throne and of one like a son of man.
Most scholars date the final redaction of the book to around 164 BC, at the time of the persecution of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, and read the visions as a message of hope for the oppressed Jews. The Book of Daniel has had an enormous influence on apocalyptic literature, on the Revelation of John and, in the Middle Ages, on the prophet's reputation as patron of dream books.