DANIEL 2:28b-45 EMPIRES OF CLAY

Written by , Rector of St. Matthew's Episcopal Church, Richmond, Virginia
 

^28b Your dream and the visions that passed through your mind as you lay on your bed are these:
²⁹ “As you were lying there, O king, your mind turned to things to come, and the revealer of mysteries showed you what is going to happen. ³⁰ As for me, this mystery has been revealed to me, not because I have greater wisdom than other living men, but so that you, O king, may know the interpretation and that you may understand what went through your mind.
³¹ “You looked, O king, and there before you stood a large statue—an enormous, dazzling statue, awesome in appearance. ³² The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, ³³ its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay. ³⁴ While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them. ³⁵ Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were broken to pieces at the same time and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer. The wind swept them away without leaving a trace. But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth.
³⁶ “This was the dream, and now we will interpret it to the king. ³⁷ You, O king, are the king of kings. The God of heaven has given you dominion and power and might and glory; ³⁸ in your hands he has placed mankind and the beasts of the field and the birds of the air. Wherever they live, he has made you ruler over them all. You are that head of gold.
³⁹ “After you, another kingdom will rise, inferior to yours. Next, a third kingdom, one of bronze, will rule over the whole earth. ⁴⁰ Finally, there will be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron—for iron breaks and smashes everything—and as iron breaks things to pieces, so it will crush and break all the others. ⁴¹ Just as you saw that the feet and toes were partly of baked clay and partly of iron, so this will be a divided kingdom; yet it will have some of the strength of iron in it, even as you saw iron mixed with clay. ⁴² As the toes were partly iron and partly clay, so this kingdom will be partly strong and partly brittle. ⁴³ And just as you saw the iron mixed with baked clay, so the people will be a mixture and will not remain united, any more than iron mixes with clay.
⁴⁴ “In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever. ⁴⁵ This is the meaning of the vision of the rock cut out of a mountain, but not by human hands—a rock that broke the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold to pieces. “The great God has shown the king what will take place in the future. The dream is true and the interpretation is trustworthy.”

If the Bible is the living Word of God, then it speaks not only of times past but of the present and times to come. Nebuchadnezzar’s dream has intrigued scholars and laymen alike for millennia, causing them to develop detailed chronologies, allegorical schemas and end-time scenarios. But, as with most of the parables of Jesus, the details find their meaning only in the ultimate message they convey. In the end, the specific identities of the kingdoms in the king’s dream have no more importance than that of the country to which the prodigal traveled. The colossus of kingdoms is an illustration of human achievement and the fact that because in the end we are weak, our achievements will be inherently weak. By contrast, God’s kingdom is eternally strong and will inevitably and ultimately triumph over all we can do.

In our search for significance and security in our lives, we speak about making a name for ourselves, finding our niche, attaining our goals, and establishing ourselves as people to be taken seriously – “impact players in the market.” With such phrases and many others like them, we aspire to develop our personal empires. Yet, like Nebuchadnezzar, if we are ever going to know peace in our lives we must acknowledge that our imperial aspirations must yield to the coming of the kingdom of God.

King of kings and Lord of lords, may my imperial aspiration be only for your kingdom. Remove those things in my life that stand as impediments to my seeing your kingdom. May I cling to the Rock that is Christ, so that I will not need to be crushed for the kingdom to be established. Amen.

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