Diving into Daniel: Daniel Interprets the Dream
Daniel 2:36-49 - Your humble servant attempts to understand this extraordinary vision of the coming kingdom of God.
““This was the dream; now we will tell its interpretation before the king. You, O king, are the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, the strength and the glory; and wherever the sons of men dwell, or the beasts of the field, or the birds of the sky, He has given them into your hand and has caused you to rule over them all.
You are the head of gold. After you there will arise another kingdom inferior to you, then another third kingdom of bronze, which will rule over all the earth. Then there will be a fourth kingdom as strong as iron; inasmuch as iron crushes and shatters all things, so, like iron that breaks in pieces, it will crush and break all these in pieces. In that you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter’s clay and partly of iron, it will be a divided kingdom; but it will have in it the toughness of iron, inasmuch as you saw the iron mixed with common clay. As the toes of the feet were partly of iron and partly of pottery, so some of the kingdom will be strong and part of it will be brittle. And in that you saw the iron mixed with common clay, they will combine with one another in the seed of men; but they will not adhere to one another, even as iron does not combine with pottery.
In the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed, and that kingdom will not be left for another people; it will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, but it will itself endure forever. Inasmuch as you saw that a stone was cut out of the mountain without hands and that it crushed the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold, the great God has made known to the king what will take place in the future; so the dream is true and its interpretation is trustworthy.”
Then King Nebuchadnezzar fell on his face and did homage to Daniel, and gave orders to present to him an offering and fragrant incense. The king answered Daniel and said, “Surely your God is a God of gods and a Lord of kings and a revealer of mysteries, since you have been able to reveal this mystery.” Then the king promoted Daniel and gave him many great gifts, and he made him ruler over the whole province of Babylon and chief prefect over all the wise men of Babylon. And Daniel made request of the king, and he appointed Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego over the administration of the province of Babylon, while Daniel was at the king’s court.”
Daniel 2:36-49 NASB1995
Daniel boldly declares that this was the dream. He doesn’t ask the king if he was correct in the description; he assumes he is correct because he believes what God has told him. I’m now in over my head trying to understand various scholars and what they think of this vision. So, I think the best two explanations that I have seen are from Enduring Word and Gotquestions.org. Here’s the one from Enduring Word:
a. Now we will tell the interpretation: Daniel first accurately reported the content of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. This gave Daniel credibility when explaining what the dream meant: the interpretation.
b. You are this head of gold: Nebuchadnezzar was clearly said to be the head of gold. After him would come three other kingdoms, each represented by the different materials Nebuchadnezzar saw in his dream. After the succession of kingdoms, then came the final kingdom set up by God.
i. “Nebuchadnezzar’s kingdom was likened unto gold because it was an absolute monarchy, God’s ideal government. Nebuchadnezzar was not, however, God’s ideal monarch!” (Louis Talbot)
c. The dream is certain, and its interpretation is sure: This prophetic dream was clearly fulfilled in history.
i. Three dominating empires came after Babylon: Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome. The nature of these empires was accurately reflected by the nature of the image Nebuchadnezzar saw in his dream.
ii. The empires succeeding Babylon were inferior to Nebuchadnezzar’s head of gold in the sense of their centralization of absolute power. Nebuchadnezzar was an absolute monarch, and the succeeding empires were progressively less so. They were larger and lasted longer than Babylon, but none held as much centralized power as Nebuchadnezzar did.
iii. “Babylon, the head of gold, was an absolute autocracy. Persia, a monarchial oligarchy with the nobles equal to the king in all but office, is represented by silver. Greece is set forth by brass, indicated the still lower value of it aristocracy of mind and influence… Rome, a democratic imperialism, with military dominion dependent upon the choice of army and citizenry and administered in the spirit of martial law, is set forth by iron.” (Philip Newell)
iv. The third kingdom of bronze was the one which shall rule over all the earth. Indeed, Alexander’s Grecian Empire was the largest among those compared in the image (except the final government of the Messiah).
v. The Babylonian Empire stood for 66 years; the Medo-Persian Empire for 208 years; the Grecian Empire for 185 years, and the Roman Empire stood for more than 500 years.
vi. Liberal commentators do not believe that the fourth kingdom is Rome, but they say it is Greece, and that the second and third kingdoms are Media and Persia respectively, instead of the Medo-Persian Empire as a whole. They interpret this way because they believe it was impossible for Daniel to predict the rise of these empires.
d. In the days of these kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed: This described the fulfillment of this prophecy in the future. The stone cut without hands shatters a confederation of kings, represented by the feet of the image, and then God’s Kingdom will dominate the earth.
i. Since Roman history provides no fulfillment of this federation of kings (which seems to number ten, because of the number of toes, and passages like Daniel 7:24 and Revelation 17:12) this prophecy must still be future.
ii. Since the fall of the Roman Empire, there has never been a world-dominating empire equal to Rome. Many have tried – the Huns, Islam, the so-called Holy Roman Empire, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin – but none have succeeded. Each of these had amazing power and influence, but nothing compared to that of the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire, in some form or another, will be revived under the leadership of the final fallen dictator, the Antichrist.
iii. It broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold: This described a single, decisive event that shattered the image representing the glory of man’s rule on earth. Since the Church or the Gospel have not, in a single decisive event, shattered the reign of human kingdoms, this event is still in the future.
iv. This isn’t the gradual salvation of the world by the church; “Smashing is not salvation. Crushing is not conversion. Destroying is not delivering nor is pulverizing the same as purification.” (W.G. Heslop)
v. This stone cut without hands is the Messiah, not the Church. Psalm 118:22, Isaiah 8:14, Isaiah 28:16, and Zechariah 3:9 also refer to Jesus as a stone. [this was part of my devotional on 3/27]
vi. Therefore, the final superpower of the world is thought to be a revival of the Roman Empire, a continuation of this image. This will be the final world empire that the returning Jesus will conquer over.
d. The kingdom shall be partly strong and partly fragile: This final world empire will be according to the nature of clay mixed with iron. It will have more the image of true strength than the substance of strength.
i. As a whole, the image accurately represented human power and empire. The image seems invincible, but it was actually unstable at its base. Therefore one blow to the foundation could topple the whole thing.
ii. It’s also significant to see that the image described devolution, not evolution. Instead of man beginning in the dust and evolving into gold, this vision declares that man’s dominion begins with gold and devalues into dust.
iii. Some 40 years from this, Daniel had a vision describing the same succession of empires. Daniel saw it from God’s perspective, and Nebuchadnezzar saw it from man’s perspective. Nebuchadnezzar saw these empires as an impressive image; Daniel saw them as fierce beasts. [this is in Daniel 7].
Ok, so let’s unpack this - I usually get in trouble trying to understand Eschatology:
The gold head is the Babylonian Empire.
The silver chest and arms represent the Medo-Persian Empire.
The bronze belly and thighs are the Greek Empire (this was the largest of the four empires) and it ruled over what was perceived in 600 BC as the “whole of the earth”.
The iron legs represent the Roman Empire
The stone that was not cut by hands (Christ) strikes at the iron/clay feet, which are supposed to represent a confederation of kings and are probably in the future. They are a mixture of strong and weak.
No empires outside of the Western Asia/European regions are discussed or even acknowledged (China, Mongolia, India, Japan, Aztec/Mayan/Incan for example). These must fall under the same model of empires but are insignificant or irrelevant to the story.
Since the fall of Rome, according to this commentary, there has never been a world-dominating empire of the same magnitude. One might argue that Great Britain, France and Spain were quite dominant around the world. Islam has attempted great empires. Totalitarian states like Russia and China (and Germany and its Axis partners, for a short time) have tried their best to be world dominating. I did a perfunctory search on whether or not the United States could be part of this future prophecy and found mixed results and nothing I found persuasive either way. Apparently, though, the final superpower under the Antichrist will be a continuation of the Roman Empire. It is true that what we call “western Civilization” owes so much to the Greek and Roman Empires.
This is a devolution of human history from gold to dust and not the reverse. In spite of what we would call the splendors of the modern age and “progress”, most humans have truly devolved into being useful idiots for the enemy. If you asked the “man on the street” about this vision in Daniel, you might be lucky and get a rare person who actually paid attention in Sunday School, but it is much more likely that you will get a foul-mouthed and angry response about invisible and hateful gods that have been replaced by “science”. We are getting close, in my honest opinion, to the apex of the second Tower of Babel.
So what does Gotquestions.org say about the dream interpretation?
Daniel’s interpretation, given to him by God, explains that the statue represents a series of kingdoms, each less glorious than the one before, as indicated by the decreasing value of the metals. Daniel identifies Nebuchadnezzar as the head of gold, stating that God had given Nebuchadnezzar much power (Daniel 2:37-38). The next kingdom to arise will be inferior to Babylon, as will the next. “Finally, there will come a fourth kingdom, strong as iron. . . . It will crush and break all the others” (Daniel 2:40).
Finally, the feet of mixed clay and iron “will be a divided kingdom” (Daniel 2:41). During the time of this final world empire, the “rock” will smash them all to bits, a prediction that “God . . . will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed” (Daniel 2:44). All previous earthly kingdoms will be brought to an end.
The Dream 2,500+ Years LaterThe first four kingdoms have been identified as the Babylonian, Persian, Greek and Roman Empires. This identification has come from the workings of history matching further prophecies. Daniel already said that Babylon, specifically Nebuchadnezzar, was the head of gold (Daniel 2:38). Babylon fell to the kingdom of the Medes and the Persians (Daniel 5:26-31). Greece became the successor to the Medo-Persian Empire (Daniel 8:20-21; 10:20 - 11:14). The “iron” empire can only be Rome.
Opinions differ on the fifth empire. Some have tried to identify various periods in Europe’s history as the clay-and-iron feet; others claim the feet represent the divided remnants of Rome before supposedly being “conquered” by Christianity. Still others believe that the clay/iron empire is yet to come: the kingdom of the Antichrist will be a “revived Roman Empire.” The last theory seems to be the best. We know, according to Revelation 17:12-13, that the Antichrist will lead a coalition of ten nations (the statue’s ten toes?). And we know that Christ will defeat the forces of the Antichrist (Revelation 17:14). After that, Jesus will set up His kingdom—the rock smashes the image—and the kingdoms of this world will “become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever” (Revelation 11:15).
Many scholars have contrasted Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel 2 with Daniel’s vision in chapter 7. Both passages reveal the coming world kingdoms, but the symbolism is strikingly different in each. The pagan king sees the kingdoms of this world as a towering work of art, impressive in size, value, and grandeur (albeit with feet of clay). God’s prophet sees the same kingdoms as bizarre, unnatural beasts, terrifying in aspect and behavior. It’s a difference of perspective: where man sees a stately, glittering tribute to himself, God sees a menagerie of aberrations. “Let us not be desirous of vain glory” (Galatians 5:26, KJV).
Ok, so that’s pretty similar in the analysis as the one from Enduring Word with some additional details. The vision in Daniel 7 will be interesting to analyze!
From Precept Austin, here’s a simple summary of the truths in this passage about the final King and Kingdom:
1) Stone ( = Christ - cp Isa 28:16, 1Pe 2:4, 5, 6, 7,8) not made by human hands - not natural = supernatural (Da 2:34, 2:45)
2) Stone struck the single great statue on its feet of iron and clay (Da 2:34)
3) Stone crushed the feet of iron and clay and the iron, clay, bronze, silver and gold all at the same time
4) Stone that struck the statue became a great mountain (Da 2:35, Mountain = Kingdom in Da 2:44, cp Rev 17:9,10, Isa 2:2)
5) The Kingdom (Great Mountain) filled the whole earth (Da 2:35)
6) The Kingdom will never be destroyed (Da 2:44)
7) The Kingdom will not be left for another people (Da 2:44)
8) The Kingdom will endure forever (Da 2:44)
9) This Kingdom will be set up in the future (Da 2:45)
Another good summary from Precept Austin about the truth about God that is revealed in Daniel 2:
Da 2:18 - He is “the God of heaven”
Da 2:19 - He reveals the mysteries
Da 2:20 - Wisdom and power belong to Him
Da 2:21 - "He… changes the times and the epochs”
Da 2:21 - “He gives wisdom to wise men and knowledge to men of understanding.”
Da 2:22 - "He … reveals the profound and hidden things”
Da 2:22 - “He knows … the darkness, And the light dwells with Him.”
Da 2:44 - He “will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed, and that kingdom will not be left for another people; it will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, but it will itself endure forever.”
Da 2:45 - He knows the future
Da 2:47 - He “is a God of gods and a Lord of kings and a revealer of mysteries”
Nebuchadnezzar is overwhelmed by this interpretation by Daniel. The king pays homage to Daniel and to God, whom he calls the God of Gods. He also rewards Daniel with great authority and power in the Babylonian Empire. Daniel asks that his friends be included in this blessing.
My next devotional examines Daniel 3:1-7, Nebuchadnezzar has a golden image of himself built.
Heaven on Wheels Daily Prayer -
Dear Lord - I think I understand this dream and its interpretation better now, thanks to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Enduring Word commentary by David Guzik is used with written permission.
Gotquestions.org was accessed on 3/26/2025 to answer the question, What is the meaning of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel 2?
Precept Austin was accessed on 3/26/2025 to review commentary for Daniel 2:36-49.