Nebuchadnezzar Is Troubled by a Dream (2:1-16):

Big Idea: God sometimes allows mere mortals, however powerful, to discover the bankruptcy of their belief systems before revealing himself through his messenger.

Understanding the Text

Daniel 2:1–49 is woven into the book’s overall literary structure in two ways. First, it advances the narrative of chapters 1–6, in which the first four focus on Nebuchadnezzar (chaps. 1–2 with historical markers and 3–4 without) and the last two show the transition from Belshazzar of Babylon to Darius the Mede (chaps. 5–6). Second, it begins the first of three parallel pairs of chapters (2 and 7) in the book’s concentric Aramaic center section. Comparatively, Daniel 2 and 7 contain “visions” (Aramaic hezu in 2:19, 28; 7:1; cf. Hebrew hazon in 8:1) that address th…