Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Vers. 1 and 2. Of this expedition of Nebuchadnezzar against Jerusalem it is related in the second book of Kings (ch. xxiv. 1): " In his days Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up, and Jehoiakim became his servant three years; then he turned and rebelled against him;" and in the second book of Chronicles (ch. xxxvi. 6): " Against him came up Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and bound him in fetters to carry him to Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar also carried of the vessels of the house of the Lord to Babylon, and put them in his temple at Babylon." That both of these statements refer to the same expedition of Nebuchadnezzar against Jehoiakim mentioned here, appears not only from the statement of the book of Chronicles agreeing with ver. 2 of this chapter, namely, that Nebuchadnezzar took away a part of the sacred vessels of the temple to Babylon, and there put them in the temple of his god, but also from the circumstance that, beyond all doubt, during the reign of Jehoiakim there was not a second siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar. It is true, indeed, that when Jehoiakim threw off the yoke at the end of three years' subjection, Nebuchadnezzar sent Chaldean, Aramaean, Moabitish, and Ammonitish hosts against him for the purpose of bringing him into subjection, but Jerusalem was not again laid siege to by these hosts till the death of Jehoiakim. Not till his son Jehoiachin ascended the throne did the servants of Nebuchadnezzar again come up against Jerusalem and besiege it. When, during the siege, Nebuchadnezzar himself came up, Jehoiachin surrendered to him after three months, and was, along with the chief men of his kingdom, and the strength of the population of Jerusalem and Judah, and the treasures of the royal palace and of the temple, carried down to Babylon (2 Kings xxiv. 2-16). The year, however, in which Nebuchadnezzar, in the reign of Jehoiakim, first took Jerusalem and carried away a part of the treasures of the temple to Babylon, is stated neither in the second book of Kings nor in Chronicles, but may be pretty certainly determined by the statements of Jeremiah (ch. xlvi. 2, xxv. 1 ff., xxxvi. 1 ff.). According to Jer. xlvi. 2, Nebuchadnezzar smote the Egyptian king Pharaoh-Necho with his army at Carchemish in the fourth year of the reign of Jehoiakim. That same year is spoken of (Jer. xxv. 1) as the first year of Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, and is represented by Jeremiah not only as a critical period for the kingdom of Judah; but also, by the prediction that the Lord would bring His servant Nebuchadnezzar against Judah and against its inhabitants, and against all the nations round about, that He would make Judah a desolation, and that these nations would serve the king of Babylon seventy years (vers. 2-11), he without doubt represents it as the beginning of the seventy years of Babylonish exile; In this the fourth year of Jehoiakim, the prophet was also commanded (ch. xxxvi. 1 ff.) to write in a book all the words which the Lord had spoken unto him against Israel, and against Judah, and against all the nations, from the day in which He had spoken to him in the time of Josiah even till then, that the house of Judah might hear all the evil which He purposed to do unto them, and might return every man from his evil way. Jeremiah obeyed this command, and caused these predictions, written in the roll of a book, to be read by Baruch to the people in the temple; for he himself was a prisoner, and therefore could not go to the temple.

The first capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar cannot therefore have taken place in the third, but must have been in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, i.e. in the year 606 B.C. This, however, appears to stand in opposition to the statement of the first verse of this chapter: u In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim N2 Nebuchadnezzar to Jerusalem." The modern critics accordingly number this statement among the errors which must disprove the genuineness of this book (see above, p. 35 f.). The apparent opposition between the language of Daniel (ch. i. 1) that Nebuchadnezzar undertook his first expedition against Jerusalem in the third year of Jehoiakim, and the affirmation of Jeremiah, according to which not only was Pharaoh-Necho slain by Nebuchadnezzar at the Euphrates in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, but also in this same year Nebuchadnezzar's invasion of Judea is for the first time announced, cannot be resolved either by the hypothesis of a different mode of reckoning the years of the reign of Jehoiakim and of Nebuchadnezzar, nor by the supposition that Jerusalem had been already taken by Nebuchadnezzar before the battle of Carchemish, in the third year of Jehoiakim. The first supposition is set aside by the circumstance that there is no certain analogy for it.1 The latter supposition is irreconcilable with Jer. xxv. and xxxvi.2 If Jeremiah in the fourth year of Jehoiakim announced that because Judah did not hearken unto his warnings addressed to them " from the thirteenth year of Josiah even unto this day," that is, for the space of three and twenty years, nor yet to the admonitions of all the other prophets (ch. xxv. 3-7) whom the Lord had sent unto them, therefore the Lord would now send His servant Nebuchad-

1 The old attempt to reconcile the difference in this way has already been shown by Hengstenberg (Beit. z. EinL in d. A. T. p. 53) to be untenable; and the supposition of Klief. (p. 65 f.), that Jehoiakim entered on his reign near the end of a year, and that Jeremiah reckons the year of his reign according to the calendar year, -but that Daniel reckons it from the day of his ascending the throne, by which it is made out that there is no actual difference, is wholly overthrown by the circumstance that in the sacred Scriptures there is no analogy for the reckoning of the year of a king's reign according to the day of the month on which he began to reign. On this supposition we might reconcile the apparent difference only if no other plan of reconciliation were possible. But such is not the actual state of the case.

nezzar with all the people of the north against the land and against the inhabitants thereof, and against all these nations round about, utterly to destroy the land and make it desolate, etc., — then it must be affirmed that he publicly made known the invasion of Judah by the Chaldeans as an event which had not yet taken place, and therefore that the supposition that Jerusalem had already in the preceding year been taken by Nebuchadnezzar, and that Jehoiakim had been brought under his subjection, is entirely excluded. It is true that in ch. xxv. Jeremiah prophesies a judgment of u perpetual desolations against Jerusalem and against all the nations," but it is as unwarrantable to apply, as Klief. does, this prophecy only " to the total destruction of Jerusalem and of Judah, which took place in the eleventh year of Zedekiah," as with older interpreters only to the first expedition of Nebuchadnezzar against Jehoiakim, 2 Kings xxiv. 1 and 2 Chron. xxxvi. 6 f. In the words of threatening uttered by the prophet there are included all the expeditions of Nebuchadnezzar against Jerusalem and Judah, from his first against Jehoiakim to the final destruction of Jerusalem under Zedekiah; so that we cannot say that it is not applicable to the first siege of Jerusalem under Jehoiakim, but to the final destruction of Judah and Jerusalem, as this whole prophecy is only a comprehensive intensified summary of all the words of God hitherto spoken by the mouth of the prophet. To strengthen the impression produced by this comprehensive word of God, he was commanded in that same year (ch. xxxvi. 1 f.), as already mentioned, to write out in the roll of a book all the words hitherto spoken by him, that it might be seen whether or not the several words gathered together into a whole might not exert an influence over the people which the separate words had failed to do.

Moreover a destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans before the overthrow of the Egyptian power on the Euphrates, which took place in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, cannot at all be thought of. King Jehoiakim was " put into bands" by Pharaoh-Necho and made a tributary vassal to him (2 Kings xxiii. 33 ff.), and all the land from the river of Egypt even unto the Euphrates was brought under his fcway; therefore Nebuchadnezzar could not desolate Judah and Jerusalem before Pharaoh-Necho was slain. Neither could Nebuchadnezzar pass in the presence of the Egyptian host stationed in the stronghold of Carchemish, on the Euphrates, and advance toward Judah, leaving behind him the city of Babylon as a prize to so powerful an enemy, nor would Necho, supposing that

Nebuchadnezzar had done this, have quietly allowed his enemy to carry on his operations, and march against his vassal Jehoiakim, without following in the rear of Egypt's powerful foe.1

The statement in the first verse may indeed, literally taken, be interpreted as meaning that Nebuchadnezzar came up against Jerusalem and took it in the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, because fc02 frequently means to come to a place. But it is not necessary always so to interpret the word, because Kia means not only to come, but also to go, to march to a place. The assertion, that in this verse aia is to be interpreted (Hav. AT. Kr. U. p. 61, Ew., and others) as meaning to come to a place, and not to march to it, is as incorrect as the assertion that the translation of KB by he marched is inadmissible or quite impossible, because r6y is generally used of the march of an army (Staeh., Ziind.). The word sin, from the first book of the Canon (cf. Gen. xiv. 5) to the last, the book of Daniel not excepted (cf. e.g. xi. 13, 17, 29, etc.), is used of military expeditions; and regarding the very general opinion, that fctta, in the sense of to march, to go to a place, occurs less frequently, Kran. (p. 21) has rightly remarked, that "it stands always and naturally in this sense whenever the movement has its point of departure from the place of him who observes it, thinks of it, or makes a communication regarding it." Therefore, e.g., it is used " always in a personal verbal command with reference to the movement, not yet undertaken, where naturally the thought as to the beginning or point of departure passes into the foreground; as e.g. in Gen. xlv. 17; Ex. vi. 11, vii. 26, ix. 1, x. 1; Num. xxxii. 6; 1 Sam. xx. 19; 2 Kings v. 5. In Jonah i. 3 it is used of the ship that was about to go to Tarshish; and again, in the words DHDV Nw, ibid., it is used when speaking of the conclusion of the journey." " On the contrary, if the speaker or narrator is at the terminus ad quern of the movement spoken of, then of course the word sin is used in the other sense of to come, to approach, and the like." Accordingly these words of Daniel, "Nebuchadnezzar fetia to Jerusalem," considered in themselves, may be interpreted without any regard to the point of departure or the termination of

1 With the above compare my Lehrb. dtr Einl. § 131, and my Commentary on 2 Kings xxiv. 1. With this Kran. agrees (p. 17 f.), and in addition remarks: " In any case Nccho would at once have regarded with jealousy every invasion of the Chaldean into the region beyond the Euphrates, and would least of all have suffered him to make an extensive western expedition for the purpose of conquering Judea, which was under the sway of Egypt."

the movement. They may mean "Nebuchadnezzar came to Jerusalem," or that u he marched to Jerusalem," according as the writer is regarded as writing in Judah or Jerusalem, or in Babylon at the point of departure of Nebuchadnezzar's journey. If the book was composed by a Maccabean Jew in Palestine, then the translation, " he came to Jerusalem," would be the more correct, because such a writer would hardly have spoken of a military movement from its eastern point of departure. The case is altogether different if Daniel, who lived as a courtier in Babylon from his youth up to old age, wrote this account. " For him, a Jew advanced in years, naturally the first movement of the expedition threatening and bringing destruction to his fatherland, whether it moved directly or by a circuitous route upon the capital, would be a significant fact, which he had in every respect a better opportunity of comprehending than his fellow-countrymen living in the remote west, since this expedition was an event which led to the catastrophe of the exile. For the Jew writing in Babylon about the expedition, the fatal commencement of the march of the Chaldean host would have a mournful significance, which it could not have for a writer living in Jerusalem."

In this way Kran. has thoroughly vindicated the rendering of N3, u he marched" to Jerusalem, and also the explanation of the word as referring to the setting out of the Chaldean army which Hitz., Hofm., Staeh., Zund., and others have declared to be opposed to the meaning of the word and " impossible," and at the same time he has set aside as groundless the further remark of Hitzig, that the designation of the time also applies to ^ST1. If N3 is to be understood of an expedition with reference to its point of departure, then the fixing of its time cannot of course refer also to the time of the arrival of the expedition at its termination and the siege then ensuing. The time of its arrival before Jerusalem, as well as the beginning, duration, and end of the siege, is not defined, and only its result, the taking of Jerusalem, is, according to the object of the author, of sufficient importance to be briefly announced. The period of the taking of the city can only be determined from dates elsewhere given. Thus from the passages in Jeremiah already referred to, it appears that this happened in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, in which year Nebuchadnezzar overcame the army of Necho king of Egypt at the Euphrates (Jer. xlvi. 2), and took all the land which the king of Egypt had subdued, from the river of Egypt to the Euphrates, so that

Pliaraoh-Necho came no more out of his land (2 Kings xxiv. 7). With this agrees Berosus in the fragments of his Chaldean history preserved by Josephus (Aiit. x. 11. 1, and c. Ap. i. 19). His words, as found in the latter passage, are these: " When his (Nebuc.)

father Nabopolassar heard that the satrap whom he had set over Egypt and over the parts of Coelesyria and Phoenicia had revolted from him, he was unable to bear the annoyance any longer, but committing a part of his army to his son Nabuchodonosor, who was then a youth, he sent him against the rebel. Nabuchodonosor encountered him in battle and overcame him, and brought the land again under his dominion. It happened that his father Nabopolassar at this time fell sick and died at the city of Babylon, after he had reigned twenty-one years (Berosus says twenty-nine vears). But when Nabuchodonosor not long after heard of the death of his father, he set the affairs of Egypt and of the other countries in order, and committed the prisoners he had taken from the Jews, the Phoenicians, and Syrians, and from the nations belonging to Egypt, to some of his friends, that they might conduct the heavy armed troops with the rest of the baggage to Babylonia, while he himself hastened with a small escort through the desert to Babylon. When he came hither, he found that the public affairs had been managed by the Chaldeans, and that the principal persons among them had preserved the kingdom for him. He now obtained possession of all his father's dominions, and gave directions that the captives should be placed as colonies in the most favourably situated districts of Babylonia," etc. This fragment illustrates in an

excellent manner the statements made in the Bible, in case one be disposed to estimate the account of the revolt of the satrap placed over Egypt and the countries lying round Coelesyria and Phoenicia as only the expression of boastfulness on the part of the Babylonish historian, claiming that all the countries of the earth of ri^ht belonged to the monarcn of Babylon; and it also shows that the rebel satrap could be none other than Pharaoh-Necho. For Berosus confirms not only the fact, as declared in 2 Kings xxiv. 7, that Pharaoh-Necho in the last year of Nabopolassar, after the battle at Megiddo, had subdued Judah, Phoenicia, and Coelesyria, i.e. u all the land from the river of Egypt unto the river Euphrates," but he also bears witness to the fact that Nebuchadnezzar, after he had slain Pharaoh-Necho (Jer. xlvi. 2) u by the river Euphrates in Carchemish," made Coelesyria, Phoenicia, and Judah tributary to the Chaldean empire, and consequently that he took Jerusalem not before but after the battle at Carchemish, in prosecution of the victory he had obtained over the Egyptians.

This does not, however, it must be confessed, prove that Jerusalem had already in the fourth year of Jehoiakim come under the dominion of Nebuchadnezzar. Therefore Hitz. and others conclude from Jer. xxxvi. 9 that Nebuchadnezzar's assault upon Jerusalem was in the ninth month of the fifth year of Jehoiakim as yet only in prospect, because in that month Jeremiah prophesied of the Chaldean invasion, and the extraordinary fast then appointed had as its object the manifestation of repentance, so that thereby the wrath of God might be averted. This Kran. endeavours to prove from 2 Kings xxv. 27, cf. Jer. lii. 31. But in the ninth month of the fifth year of Jehoiakim, Jeremiah caused to be rehearsed to the people in the court of the temple his former prophecies, written by Baruch in a book according to the commandment of the Lord, and pronounced the threatening against Jehoiakim because he had cut to pieces this book and had cast it into the fire, Jer. xxxvi. 29 ff. This threatening, that God would bring upon the seed and upon the servants of Jehoiakim, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, all the evil which He had pronounced against them (ver. 31), does not exclude the previous capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, but announces only the carrying out of the threatened judgment in the destruction of Jerusalem and of the kingdom of Judah to be as yet imminent.

The extraordinary fast of the people also, which was appointed for the ninth month, was not ordained with the view of averting the destruction of Judah and Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, which was then expected, after the battle at Carchemish; for although fasts were sometimes appointed or kept for the purpose of turning away threatened judgment or punishment (e.g. 2 Sam. xii. 15 ff.; 1 Kings xxi. 27; Esth. iv. 1, iii. 16), yet, in general, fasts were more frequently appointed to preserve the penitential remembrance of punishments and chastisements which had been already endured: cf. e.g. Zech. vii. 5; Ezra x. 6 f.; Neh. i. 4; 1 Sam. xxxi. 13; 2 Sam. i. 12, etc. To ascertain, therefore, what was the object of this fast which was appointed, we must keep in view the character of Jehoiakim and his relation to this fast. The godless Jehoiakim, as he is represented in 2 Kings xxiii. 37, 2 Chron. xxxvi. 5, and Jer. xxii. 13 ff., was not the man who wrould have ordained a fast (or allowed it if the priests had wished to appoint it) to humble himself and his people before

God, and by repentance and prayer to turn away the threatened judgment. Before he could ordain a fast for such a purpose, Jehoiakim must hear and observe the word of the prophet, and in that case he would not have been so enraged at the reading of the prophecies of Jeremiah as to have cut the book to pieces and cast it into the fire. If the fast took place previous to the arrival of the Chaldeans before Jerusalem, then neither the intention of the king nor his conduct in regard to it can be comprehended. On the other hand, as Ziind. p. 21, and Klief. p. 57, have shown, both the ordaining of a general fast, and the anger of the king at the reading of the prophecies of Jeremiah in the presence of the people in the temple, are well explained, if the fast is regarded as designed to keep in remembrance the day of the year on which Nebuchadnezzar took Jerusalem. As Jehoiakim bore with difficulty the yoke of the Chaldean oppression, and from the first meditated on a revolt, for after three years he did actually revolt, he instituted the fast u to stir up the feelings of the people against the state of vassalage into which they had been brought" (Klief.), a and to call forth a religious enthusiasm among them, to resist the oppressor " (Ziind.). This opposition could only, however, result in the destruction of the people and the kingdom. Jeremiah therefore had his prophecies read to the people in the temple on that day by Baruch u as a counterbalance to the desire of the king," and announced to them that Nebuchadnezzar would come again to subdue the land and to destroy from out of it both man and beast. " Therefore the king was angry, and destroyed the book, because he would not have the excitement of the people to be so hindered; and therefore also the princes were afraid (Jer. xxxvi. 16) when they heard that the book of these prophecies was publicly read " (Klief.). The words of 2 Kings xxv. 27, cf. Jer. lii. 31, do not contradict this conclusion from Jer. xxxvi. 9, even though that drawn by Kran., p. 18, from this passage were adopted, viz. that since almost thirty-seven whole years had passed from the carrying away of Jehoiachin to the end of the forty-three years of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, but Jehoiachin had reigned only for a few months, the beginning of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar must be dated in the sixth of the eleven years' reign of Jehoiakim, the predecessor of Jehoiachin. For since, according to the testimony of Berosus, Nebuchadnezzar conducted the war against Hither Asia, in which he slew king Necho at Carchemish, and as a further consequence of this victory took Jerusalem, before the death of his father, in the capacity of a commander-in-chief clothed with royal power, and when in Hither Asia, as it seems, and on the confines of Egypt, he then for the first time heard tidings of his father's death, and therefore hastened by the shortest road to Babylon to assume the crown and lay claim to all his father's dominions, — then it follows that his forty-three years' reign begins after the battle of Carchemish and the capture of Jerusalem under Jehoiakim, and might possibly have begun in the sixth year of Jehoiakim, some five months after the ninth month of the fifth year of Jehoiakim (Jer. xxxvi. 9). Against this supposition the circumstance that Nebuchadnezzar, as stated in Jer. xlvi. 2, xxv. 1, and also Dan. i. 1, was called king of Babylon before he had actually ascended the throne is no valid objection, inasmuch as this title is explained as a prolepsis which would be easily understood by the Jews in Palestine. Nabopolassar came into no contact at all with Judah; the Jews therefore knew scarcely anything of his reign and his death; and the year of Nebuchadnezzar's approach to Jerusalem would be regarded in a general way both by Jeremiah and his cotemporaries as the first year of his reign, and the commander of the Chaldean army as the king of Babylon, no matter whether on account of his being actual co-regent with his aged and infirm father, or merely because he was clothed with royal power as the chief commander of the army.1 In this sense Daniel (ch. i. 1) names him who was afterwards king, at a time when he was not yet the possessor of the throne, the king of Babylon; for he was in effect the king, so far as the kingdom of Judah was concerned, when he undertook the first expedition against it.

But the reckoning of Kran. is also not exact. Nebuchadnezzar's ascending the throne and the beginning of his reign would only happen in the sixth year of Jehoiakim if either the three months of Jehoiachin (37 years' imprisonment of Jehoiachin -f- 1 year's reign -f- 5 years of Jehoiakim = 43 years of Nebuchadnezzar) are to be reckoned as 1 year, or at least the 11 years of Jehoiakim as 11 full years, so that 5| years of Jehoiakim's reign must be added to the 37 years of Jehoiachin's imprisonment and

1 Thus not only Hgstb. Beitr. i. p. 63, Hav., Klief., Kran., etc., but also v. Lengerke, Dan. p. 3, and Hitz. Dan. p. 3. The latter, e.g., remarks: " The designation as king does not furnish any obvious objection, for Nebuchadnezzar, the commander-in-chief of the army, is to the Jewish writers (thus Jer. xxv. 1) a king when he first comes under their notice. They appear to have had no knowledge whatever of his father "

the 3 months of his reign so as to make up the 43 years of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar. Thus Jehoiakim must have reigned 5£ years at the time when Nebuchadnezzar ascended the throne. Whereas if Jehoiakim's reign extended only to 10^ years, winch were reckoned as 11 years in the books of the Kings, according to the general method of recording the length of the reign of kings, then Nebuchadnezzar's ascending the throne took place in the fifth year of Jehoiakim's reign, or, at the furthest, after he had reigned 4 J years. This latter reckoning, whereby the first year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign is made to coincide with the fifth year of Jehoiakim's, is demanded by those passages in which the years of the reign of the kings of Judah are made parallel with the years of Nebuchadnezzar's reign; viz. 2 Kings xxiv. 12, where it is stated that Jehoiachin was taken prisoner and carried away captive in the eighth year of Nebuchadnezzar; also Jer. xxxii. 1, where the tenth year of Zedekiah corresponds with the eighteenth of Nebuchadnezzar; and finally, Jer. Hi. 5, 12, and 2 Kings xxv. 2, 8, where the eleventh year of Zedekiah corresponds with the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar. According to all these passages, the death of Jehoiakim, or the end of his reign, happened either in the eighth year, or at all events in the end of the seventh year, of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, for Jehoiachin reigned only three months; so that Nebuchadnezzar reigned six full years, and perhaps a few months longer, as contemporary with Jehoiakim, and consequently he must have mounted the throne in the fifth of the eleven years of Jehoiakim's reign.1

The above discussion has at the same time also furnished us with the means of explaining the apparent contradiction which has been found between Dan. i. 1 ff. and Dan. ii. 1 ff., and which has been brought forward as an historical error in:rmiment ap-ainst the genuineness of the book. According to ch. i. 3 ft., Nebuchadnezzar after the capture of Jerusalem commanded that young Israelites of

1 The synchronistic statements in the passages, 2 Kings xxiv. 12, xxv. 2. 8, Jer. xxxii. 1 and lii. 5, 12, might indeed be interpreted as meaning, that in them the years of Nebuchadnezzar's reign are reckoned from the time when his father entrusted to him the chief command of the army at the breaking out of the war with Nccho (see my Commentary on 2 Kings xxiv. 12); but in that case the years of Nebuchadnezzar's reign would amount to 44^ years, viz. 37 years of Jehoiachin'a imprisonment, 3 months of his reign, and 7 years of Jehoiakim's reign. And according to this reckoning, it would also result from the passages referred to, that the beginning of his 43 years' reign happened in the fifth year of Jehoiakim.

noble birth should be carried away to Babylon, and there educated for the space of three years in the literature and wisdom of the Chaldeans; and, according to ch. i. 18, after the expiry of the appointed time, they were brought in before the king that they might be employed in his service. But these three years of instruction, according to ch. ii. 1 ff., expired in the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, when Daniel and his companions were ranked among the wise men of Babylon, and Daniel interpreted to the king his dream, which his Chaldean magi were unable to do (ch. ii. 13 ff., 19 ff.). If we observe that Nebuchadnezzar dreamed his dream " in the second year of his reign," and that he entered on his reign some time after the destruction of Jerusalem and the captivity of Jehoiakim, then we can understand how the three years appointed for the education of Daniel and his companions came to an end in the second year of his reign; for if Nebuchadnezzar began to reign in the fifth year of Jehoiakim, then in the seventh year of Jehoiakim three years had passed since the destruction of Jerusalem, which took place in the fourth year of this king. For the carrying away of the Israelitish youths followed, without doubt, immediately after the subjugation of Jehoiakim, so that a whole year or more of their period of education had passed before Nebuchadnezzar mounted the throne. This conclusion is not set aside by what Berosus affirms, that Nebuchadnezzar, after he heard of the death of his father, committed the captives he had taken from the Jews to the care of some of his friends that they might be brought after him, while he himself hastened over the desert to Babylon; for that statement refers to the great transport of prisoners who were carried away for the colonization of Central Asia. As little does the consideration that a twofold method of reckoning the year of Nebuchadnezzar's government by Daniel is improbable militate against this reconciliation of the discrepancy, for no such twofold method of reckoning exists. In ch. i. the year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign is not given, but Nebuchadnezzar is only named as being king;1 while in ch. ii. 1 mention is made not merely of the

1 If, on the contrary, Bleek understands from Dan. i. 1 that Nebuchadnezzar had become king of Babylon in the third year of Jehoiakim at Jerusalem, whilst, " perhaps only with the design of making the pretended opposition between ch. i. 1 and ii. 1 truly evident, he understands the appositional designation?]^d

733 as a more definite determination of the meaning of the verb N3, this idea finds recommendation neither in the position of the words, nor in the expression, ch. i. 3, nor in the accents." Kranichfeld, p. 19.

second year of Nebuchadnezzar, but of the second year of his reign, from which it appears that the historian here reckons from the actual commencement of his reign. Also, as Klief., p. 67, has well remarked, one may u easily discover the ground on which Daniel in ch. i. 1 followed a different mode of reckoning from that adopted in ch. ii. 1. In ch. i. Daniel had to do with Israelitish circumstances and persons, and therefore followed, in making reference to Nebuchadnezzar, the general Israelitish mode of contemplation. He reckons his years according to the years of the Israelitish kings, and sees in him already the king; on the contrary, in ch. ii. Daniel treats of the relations of the world-power, and he reckons here accurately the year of Nebuchadnezzar, the bearer of the world-power, from the day in which, having actually obtained the possession of the world-power, he became king of Babylon."

If we now, in conclusion, briefly review the results of the preceding discussions, it will be manifest that the following is the course of events: — Necho the king of Egypt, after he had made Jehoiakim his vassal king, went forth on an expedition against the Assyrian kingdom as far as the Euphrates. Meanwhile, however, with the dissolution of the Assyrian kingdom by the fall of Nineveh, the part of that kingdom lying on this side of the Tigris had come under the dominion of the Chaldeans, and the old and enfeebled king Nabopolassar gave to his son Nebuchadnezzar the chief command of the army, with the commission to check the advance of the Egyptians, and to rescue from them the countries they had occupied and bring them again under the Chaldean rule. In consequence of this, Nebuchadnezzar took the field against Hither Asia in the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, and in the first month of the fourth year of Jehoiakim slew Pharaoh-Necho at Carchemish and pursued his army to the confines of Egypt, and in the ninth month of the same year took Jerusalem and made king Jehoiakim his subject. While Nebuchadnezzar was busied in Hither Asia with the subjugation of the countries that had been conquered by Pharaoh-Necho, he received the tidings of the death of his father Nabopolassar in Babylon, and hastened forward with a small guard by the nearest way through the desert to Babylon in order to assume the government, giving directions that the army, along with the whole band of prisoners, should follow him by slow marches. But as soon as the Chaldean army had left Judca and returned to Babylon, Jehoiakim sought how he might throw off the Chaldean yoke, and three years after his subjugation he revolted, probably at a time when Nebuchadnezzar was engaged in establishing his dominion in the East, so that he could not immediately punish this revolt, but contented himself meanwhile with sending against Jehoiakim the armies of Chaldeans, Syrians, Moabites, and Ammonites, whom he had left behind on the confines of Judah. They were unable, however, to vanquish him as long as he lived. It was only after his son Jehoiachin had ascended the throne that Nebuchadnezzar, as commander of the army, returned with a powerful host to Jerusalem and besieged the city. While the city was being besieged, Nebuchadnezzar came in person to superintend the war. Jehoiachin with his mother, and his chief officers from the city, went out to surrender themselves to the king of Babylon. But Nebuchadnezzar took him as a prisoner, and commanded that the golden vessels of the temple and the treasures of the royal palace should be taken away, and he carried the king with the great men of the kingdom, the men of war, the smiths and craftsmen, as prisoners to Babylon, and made his vassal Mattaniah, Jehoiachin' s uncle, king in Jerusalem, under the name of Zedekiah (2 Kings xxviii. 8-17). This happened in the eighth year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kings xxiv. 12), and thus about six years after Daniel had interpreted his dream (ch. ii.), and had been promoted by him to the rank of president of the wise men in Babylon.

The name "")tfN3l3i33 is written in ver. 1 with K, as it is uniformly in Jeremiah, e.g. xxvii. 6, 8, 20, xxviii. 3, 11, 12, xxix. i. 3, and in the books of the Kings and Chronicles, as 2 Kings xxiv. 1, 10, 11, xxv. 1, 2 Chron. xxxvi. 6, 10, 13; whereas in Dan. i. 18 it is written without the N, as it is also in ch. ii. 1, 28, 46, iii. 1-3, 5 ff., and Ezra i. 7, v. 12, 14, Esth. ii. 6. From this circumstance Hitzig concludes that the statement in Daniel is derived from 2 Kings xxiv. 1, because the manner of writing the name with the K is not peculiar to this book (and is not the latest form), but is that of 2 Kings xxiv. 1. Both statements are incorrect. The writing without the K cannot on this account be taken as the latest form, because it is not found in the Chronicles, and that with the K is not peculiar to the second book of Kings, but is the standing form, along with the more national Babylonian form "^NVni^ (with r), in Jer. xxi. 2, 7, xxxii. 1, xxxv. 11, xxxix. 11, Ezek. xxvi. 7, xxix. 18, xxx. 10, which, according to Menant (Grammaire Assyrienne^ 1868, p. 327), is written in Babylonian inscriptions Nabukudurriusur (l¥K "tt3 133, i.e. Nebo coronam servat), the inscription of Behistan having the form Nabukudratschara.

Megasthenes and Berosus, in Polyhistor, write the name Naffov^ Kobpocropos. The writing Nebuchadnezar, with n and without the X, appears to be the Aramean form, since it prevails in the Chal dean portions of Daniel and Ezra, and accounts for the Masoretic pronunciation of the word (the 2f with Dagesch forte). On other forms of the name, cf. Niebuhr, Gesch. Assars, p. 41 f.

Ver. 2. " The Lord gave Jehoiakim into his hands" corresponds with the words in 2 Kings xxiv. 1, " he became his servant," and with 2 Chron. xxxvi. 6, "and he bound him in fetters." " And part of the vessels of the house of God" J">Vi?9 without the Dag. forte, meaning properly from the end or extremity, is abbreviated from WP iy HVJ9D, cf. Jer. xxv. 33, Gen. xlvii. 21, Ex. xxvi. 28, and shows that " that which was found from end to end contributed its share; meaning that a great part of the whole was taken, although nvp of itself never means a part" (Kran.). As to the statement of the text, cf. 2 Chron. xxxvi. 7. These vessels he brought (commanded to be brought) into the land of Shinar, i.e. Babylonia (Gen. x. 10). into the temple of his god, i.e. Bel, and indeed into the treasure-house of this temple. Thus we understand the meaning of the two latter clauses of ver. 2, while Hitz. and Kran., with many older interpreters, refer the suffix in D£V£ to Jehoiakim, and also to the vessels, on account of the express contrast in the following words, Dvsrrn&O (Kran.), and because, if it is not stated here, it is nowhere else mentioned that Nebuchadnezzar carried away men also (Hitz.). But the latter fact is expressly affirmed in ver. 3, and not only supposed, as Hitz. alleges, and it was not necessary that it should be expressed in ver. 2. The application of the suffix to Jehoiakim or the Jewish youths who were carried captive is excluded by the connection of EN\T with Vr6x n*3, into the house of his god. But the assertion that IV3, house, here means country, is not proved from Hos. viii. 1, ix. 15, nor is warranted by such passages as Ex. xxix. 45, Num. xxxv. 34, Ezek. xxxvii. 27, etc., where mention is made of God's dwelling in the land. For God's dwelling in the land is founded on the fact of His gracious presence in the temple of the land, and even in these passages the word land does not stand for the word house. Equally unfounded is the further remark, that if by the expression Wpjj JV3 the temple is to be understood, the preposition bx would stand before it, for which Zech. xi. 13, Isa. xxxvii. 23, Gen. xlv. 25 are appealed to. But 6uch passages have been referred to without observing that in them the preposition?x stands only before living objects, where it is necessary, but not before inanimate objects, such as 1V2, where the special object of the motion is with sufficient distinctness denoted by the accusative. The words following, DvanvifcO, fall in not as adversative, but explicative: and indeed (or, namely) the vessels brought he into the treasure-house of his god — as booty. The carrying away of a part of the vessels of the temple and a number of the distinguished Jewish youth to Babylon, that they might be there trained for service at the royal court, was a sign and pledge of the subjugation of Judah and its God under the dominion of the kings and the gods of Babylon. Both are here, however, mentioned with this design, that it might be known that Daniel and his three friends, of whom this book gives further account, were among these youths, and that the holy vessels were afterwards fatal (ch. v.) to the house of the Babylonian

Vers. 3-7. The name T3SKW, sounding like the Old Persian Acp, a horse, has not yet received any satisfactory or generally adopted explanation. The man so named was the chief marshal of the court of Nebuchadnezzar. D"*pnD T\_ (the word 3"} used for "i^, vers. 7, 9, belongs to the later usage of the language, cf. Jer. xxxix. 3) means chief commander of the eunuchs, i.e. overseer of the serail, the Kislar Aga, and then in a wider sense minister of the royal palace, chief of all the officers; since D^D frequently, with a departure from its fundamental meaning, designates only a courtier, chamberlain, attendant on the king, as in Gen. xxxvii. 36. The meaning of W3\f?9 more definitely determined by the context, is to lead, i.e. into the land of Shinar, to Babylon. In ^*)^ *?.?, Israel is the theocratic name of the chosen people, and is not to be explained, as Hitz. does, as meaning that Benjamin and Levi, and many belonging to other tribes, yet formed part of the kingdom of Judah. |D* «.. Xn$D*, as well of the seed... as also. WtoPns is the Zend, frathema, Sanscr. prathama, i.e. persons of distinction, magnates. ^I?1., the object to N^n?, designates youths of from fifteen to twenty years of age. Among the Persians the education of boys by the iratSdywyai ftaatXeiot began, according to Plato (Alcib. i. 37), in their fourteenth year, and according to Xenophon (Cyrop. i. 2), the efafiot were in their seventeenth year capable of entering into the service of the king. In choosing the young men, the master of the eunuchs was commanded to have regard to bodily perfection and beauty as well as to mental endowments. Freedom from blemish and personal beauty were looked upon as a charac- teristic of moral and intellectual nobility; cf. Curtius, xvii. 5, 29. DlND, blemish, is written with an k, as in Job xxxi. 7.

Ver. 4. yswfty skilful, intelligent in all wisdom, i.e. in the subjects of Chaldean wisdom (cf. ver. 17), is to be understood of the ability to apply themselves to the study of wisdom. In like manner the other mental requisites here mentioned are to be understood. rijn *jn*? having knowledge, showing understanding; JHO 'jftMD, possessing a faculty for knowledge, a strength of judgment. EJ3 ni3 "IBM, in whom was strength, i.e. who had the fitness in bodily and mental endowments appropriately to stand in the palace of the king, and as servants to attend to his commands. DlEOT (fo teach them) is co-ordinate with N*ar6 (to bring) in ver. 3, and depends on "TON^ (and he spake). For this service they must be instructed and trained in the learning and language of the Chaldeans. "is? refers to the Chaldee literature, and in ver. 17 ■»BD"?3, and tfBy to conversation or the power of speaking in that language. D^fc^ Chaldeans, is the name usually given (1) to the inhabitants of the Babylonian kingdom founded by Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar, and (2) in a more restricted sense to the first class of the Babylonish priests and learned men or magi, and then frequently to the whole body of the wise men of Babylon; cf. at ch. ii. 2. In this second meaning the word is here used. The language of the D^3 is not, as Ros., Hitz., and Kran. suppose, the Eastern Aramaic branch of the Semitic language, which is usually called the Chaldean language; for this tongue, in which the Chaldean wise men answered Nebuchadnezzar (ch. ii. 4 ff.), is called in ch. ii. 4, as well as in Ezra iv. 7 and Isa. xxxvi. 11, the JVD"JN, Aramaic (Syriac), and is therefore different from the language of the D^B>3.

But the question as to what this language used by the Chaldeans was, depends on the view that may be taken of the much controverted question as to the origin of the B^r, XaXhaloi. The oldest historical trace of the D^S lies in the name D^I&S "NN ( Ur of the Chaldees, LXX. %wpa rcov XaXSalcov), the place from which Terah the father of Abraham went forth with his family to Charran in the north of Mesopotamia. The origin of Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees, when taken in connection with the fact (Gen. xxii. 22) that one of the sons of Nahor, Abraham's brother, was called ^3 (Chesed), whose descendants would be called D^fcB, appears to speak for the origin of the OTfca from Shem. In addition to this also, and in support of the same opinion, it has been noticed that one of Shem's sons was called IBbB^S (Arphaxad). But the connection of l^DSiS with "1BG is unwarrantable; and that Nahor's son "Tb>3 was the father of a race called DHBO, is a supposition which cannot be established. But if a race actually descended from this ifeo, then they could be no other than the Bedouin tribe the D^fett, which fell upon Job's camels (Job i. 17), but not the people of the Chaldees after whom, in Terah's time, Ur was already named. The sojourn of the patriarch Abraham in Ur of the Chaldees finally by no means proves that Terah himself was a Chaldean. He may have been induced also by the advance of the Chaldeans into Northern Mesopotamia to go forth on his wanderings.

This much is at all events unquestionable, and is now acknowledged, that the original inhabitants of Babylonia were of Semitic origin, as the account of the origin of the nations in Gen. x. shows. According to Gen. x. 22, Shem had five sons, Elam, Asshur, Arphaxad, Lud, and Aram, whose descendants peopled and gave name to the following countries: — The descendants of Elam occupied the country called Elymais, between the Lower Tigris and the mountains of Iran; of Asshur, Assyria, lying to the north — the hilly country between the Tigris and the mountain range of Iran; of Arphaxad, the country of Arrapachitis on the Upper Tigris, on the eastern banks of that river, where the highlands of Armenia begin to descend. Lud, the father of the Lydians, is the representative of the Semites who went westward to Asia Minor; and Aram of the Semites who spread along the middle course of the Euphrates to the Tigris in the east, and to Syria in the west. From this M. Duncker (Gesch. des Alterth.) has concluded: "According to this catalogue of the nations, which shows the extension of the Semitic race from the mountains of Armenia southward to the Persian Gulf, eastward to the mountains of Iran, westward into Asia Minor, we follow the Semites along the course of the two great rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris, to the south. Northwards from Arphaxad lie the mountains of the Chasdim, whom the Greeks call Chaldsei, Carduchi, Gordisei, whose boundary toward Armenia was the river Centrites."

"If we find the name of the Chaldeans also on the Lower Euphrates, if in particular that name designates a region on the western bank of the Euphrates to its mouth, the extreme limit of the fruitful land watered by the Euphrates towards the Arabian desert, then we need not doubt that this name was brought from the

Armenian mountains to the Lower Euphrates, and that it owes its origin to the migration of these Chaldeans from the mountains. — Berosus uses as interchangeable the names Chaldea and Babylonia for the whole region between the Lower Euphrates and the Tigris down to the sea. But it is remarkable that the original Semitic name of this region, Shinar, is distinct from that of the Chaldeans; remarkable that the priests in Shinar were specially called Chaldeans, that in the fragments of Berosus the patriarchs were already designated Chaldeans of this or that city, and finally that the native rulers were particularly known by this name. We must from all this conclude, that there was a double migration from the north to the regions on the Lower Euphrates and Tigris; that they were first occupied by the Elamites, who came down along the Tigris; and that afterwards a band came down from the mountains of the Chaldeans along the western bank of the Tigris, that they kept their flocks for a long time in the region of Nisibis, and finally that they followed the Euphrates and obtained superiority over the earlier settlers, who had sprung from the same stem (?), and spread themselves westward from the mouth of the Euphrates. The supremacy which was thus established was exercised by the chiefs of the Chaldeans; they were the ruling family in the kingdom which they founded by their authority, and whose older form of civilisation they adopted." If, according to this, the Chaldeans are certainly not Semites, then it is not yet decided whether they belonged to the Japhetic race of Aryans, or, as C. Sax1 has recently endeavoured to make probable, to the Hamitic race of Cushites, a nation belonging to the Tartaric (Turamic) family of nations. As to the Aryan origin,

1 In the Abhdl. " on the ancient history of Babylon and the nationality of the Cushites and the Chaldeans," in the Deutsch. morg. Ztschr. xxii. pp. 1-68. Here Sax seeks to prove "that the Chaldeans, identical with the biblical C litis - dim, were a tribe ruling from ancient times from the Persian Gulf to the Black Sea, and particularly in Babylonia, which at length occupied the southern region from the mouth of the Euphrates to the Armeneo-Pontine range of mountains, but was in Babylonia especially represented by the priest caste and the learned." This idea the author grounds on the identification of the Bible Cushites with the Scythians of the Greeks and Romans, the evidence for which is for the most part extremely weak, and consists of arbitrary and violent combinations, the inconsistency of which is at once manifest, as e.g. the identification of the D^'J'S with the D*n?D3i Gen. x. 14, the conclusions drawn from Ezek. xxix. 10 and xxxviii. 5 f. of the spread of the Cushites into Arabia and their reception into the Scythian army of the northern Gog, etc. In general, as Sax presents it, this supposition is untenable, yet it contains elements of truth which are not to be overlooked.

besides the relation of the Chaldeans, the Gordisei, and the Carduchi to the modern Kurds, whose language belongs to the Lido-Germanic, and indeed to the Aryan family of languages, the further circumstance may be referred to: that in Assyria and Babylonia the elements of the Aryan language are found in very ancient times. Yet these two facts do not furnish any conclusive evidence on the point. From the language of the modern Kurds being related to the Aryan language no certain conclusion can be drawn as to the lanrmajre of the ancient Chaldees, Gordisei, and Carduchi; and the introduction of Aryan words and appellations into the language of the Semitic Assyrians and Babylonians is fully explained, partly from the intercourse which both could not but maintain with Iranians, the Medes and Persians, who were bordering nations, partly from the dominion exercised for some time over Babylonia by the Iranian race, which is affirmed in the fragments of Berosus, according to which the second dynasty in Babylon after the Flood was the Median. Notwithstanding we would decide in favour of the Aryan origin of the Chaldeans, did not on the one side the biblical account of the kingdom which Nimrod the Cushite founded in Babel and extended over Assyria (Gen. x. 8-12), and on the other the result to which the researches of the learned into the antiquities of Assyria regarding the development of culture and of writing in Babylonia,1 make this view very doubtful.

1 The biblical tradition regarding the kingdom founded by Nimrod in Babel, Duncker (p. 204) has with arbitrary authority set aside, because it is irreconcilable with his idea of the development of Babylonian culture. It appears, however, to receive confirmation from recent researches into the ancient monuments of Babylonia and Assyria, which have led to the conclusion, that of the three kinds of cuneiform letters that of the Babylonian bricks is older than the Assyrian, and that the oldest form originated in an older hieroglyphic writing, of which isolated examples are found in the valley of the Tigris and in Susiana; whence it must be concluded that the invention of cuneiform letters did not take place among the Semites, but among a people of the Tauranian race which probably had in former times their seat in Susiana, or at the mouth of the Euphrates and the Tigris on the Persian Gulf. Cf. Spiegel in Herz.'s Realencyclop., who, after stating this result, remarks: " Thus the fact is remarkable that a people of the Turko -Tartaric race appear as the possessors of a high culture, while people of this tribe appear in the world's history almost always as only destitute of culture, and in many ways hindering civilisation; so that it cannot but be confessed that, so far as matters now are, one is almost constrained to imagine that the state of the case is as follows," and thus he concludes his history of cuneiform writing: — " Cuneiform writing arose in ancient times, several thousand years before the birth of Christ, very probably from an ancient hieroglyphic system of writing, in the region about the mouths of the Euphrates and the

If, then, for the present no certain answer can be given to the question as to the origin of the Chaldeans and the nature of their language and writing, yet this much may be accepted as certain, that the language and writing of the D^.^l wras not Semitic or Aramaic, but that the Chaldeans had in remote times migrated into Babylonia, and there had obtained dominion over the Semitic inhabitants of the land, and that from among this dominant race the Chaldees, the priestly and the learned caste of the Chaldeans, arose. This caste in Babylon is much older than the Chaldean monarchy founded by Nebuchadnezzar.

Daniel and his companions were to be educated in the wisdom of the Chaldean priests and learned men, which was taught in the schools of Babylon, at Borsippa in Babylonia, and Hipparene in Mesopotamia (Strab. xvi. 1, and Plin. Hist. Nat. vi. 26). Ver. 5. To this end Nebuchadnezzar assigned to them for their support provision from the king's household, following Oriental custom, according to which all officers of the court were fed from the king's table, as Athen. iv. 10, p. 69, and Plut. probl. vii. 4, testify regarding the Persians. This appears also (1 Kings v. 2, 3) to have been the custom in Israel.)DV3, DV "ini? the daily portion, cf. Ex. v. 13, 19; Jer. lii. 34, etc. J2H3 comes from path, in Zend, paiti, Sanscr. prati = irpoTi, irpo^, and bag, in Sanscr. bhdga9 portion, provision, cf. Ezek. xxv. 7. With regard to the composition, cf. the Sanscr. pratibhdga, a portion of fruits, flowers, etc., which the Rajah daily requires for his household; cf. Gildemeister in Lassen's Zeits. f. d. Kunde des Morg. iv. 1, p. 214. 33ns therefore means neither ambrosia, nor dainties, but generally food, victuals,

Tigris on the Persian Gulf. It was found existing by a people of a straDge race, belonging neither to the Semites nor to the Indo-Germans. It was very soon, however, adopted by the Semites. The oldest monuments of cuneiform writing belong to the extreme south of the Mesopotamian plain. In the course of time it pressed northward first to Babylon, where it assumed a more regular form than among the Assyrians. From Assyria it may have come among the Indo- Germans first to Armenia; for the specimens of cuneiform writing found in Armenia are indeed in syllabic writing, but in a decidedly Indo-Germanic language. How the syllabic writing was changed into letter- (of the alphabet) writing is as yet obscure. The most recent kind of cuneiform writing which we know, the Old Persian, is decidedly letter- writing." Should this view of the development of the cuneiform style of writing be confirmed by further investigations, then it may be probable that the Chaldeans were the possessors and cultivators of this science of writing, and that their language and literature belonged neither to the Semitic nor yet to the Indo-Germanic or Aryan family of languages.

food of flesh and meal in opposition to wine, drink (VW'o is singular), and vegetables (ver. 12).

The king also limits the period of their education to three years, according to the Persian as well as the Chaldean custom. DTnJTi does not depend on ""J^5- (ver« 3), but is joined with |OM, and is the final infinitive with 1 explicative, meaning, and that he may nourish them. The infinitive is expressed by the fin. verb VTDg^ to stand before (the king). The carrying out of the king's command is passed over as a matter of course, yet it is spoken of as obeyed (cf. ver. 6 f.).

Ver. 6. Daniel and his three friends were among the young men who were carried to Babylon. They were of the sons of Judah, i.e. of the tribe of Judah. From this it follows that the other youths of noble descent who had been carried away along with them belonged to other tribes. The name of none of these is recorded. The names only of Daniel and his three companions belonging to the same tribe are mentioned, because the history recorded in this book specially brings them under our notice. As the future servants of the Chaldean king, they received as a sign of their relation to him other names, as the kings Eliakim and Mattaniah had their names changed (2 Kings xxiii. 34, xxiv. 17) by Necho and Nebuchadnezzar when they made them their vassals. But while these kings had only their paternal names changed for other Israelitish names which were given to them by their conquerors, Daniel and his friends received genuine heathen names in exchange for their own significant names, which were associated with that of the true God. The names given to them were formed partly from the names of Babylonish idols, in order that thereby they might become wholly naturalized, and become estranged at once from the religion and the country of their fathers.1 Daniel, i.e. God will judge, received the name Belteshazzar, formed from Bel, the name of the chief god of the Babylonians. Its meaning has not yet been determined. ffananiah, i.e. the Lord is gracious, received the name Shadrach, the origin of which is wholly unknown; Mishael, i.e. who is what the Lord is, was called Meshach, a name yet undeciphered; and Azariah} i.e. the Lord helps, had his name changed into Abedncgo, i.e. slave, servant of Nego or Nebo, the name of the second god of the

1 " The design of the king was to lead these youths to adopt the customs of the Chaldeans, that they might have nothing in common with the chosen people."— Calvin.

Babylonians (Isa. xlvi. 1), the 2 being changed by the influence of 2 in 12V into 3 (i.e. Nego instead of Nebo).

Vers. 8—16. The command of the king, that the young men should be fed with the food and wine from the king's table, was to Daniel and his friends a test of their fidelity to the Lord and to His law, like that to which Joseph was subjected in Egypt, corresponding to the circumstances in which he was placed, of his fidelity to God (Gen. xxxix. 7 f.). The partaking of the food brought to them from the king's table was to them contaminating, because forbidden by law; not so much because the food was not prepared according to the Levitical ordinance, or perhaps consisted of the flesh of animals which to the Israelites were unclean, for in this case the youths were not under the necessity of refraining from the wine, but the reason of their rejection of it was, that the heathen at their feasts offered up in sacrifice to their gods a part of the food and the drink, and thus consecrated their meals by a religious rite; whereby not only he who participated in such a meal participated in the worship of idols, but the meat and the wine as a whole were the meat and the wine of an idol sacrifice, partaking of which, according to the saying of the apostle (1 Cor. x. 20 f.), is the same as sacrificing to devils. Their abstaining from such food and drink betrayed no rigorism going beyond the Mosaic law, a tendency which first showed itself in the time of the Maccabees. What, in this respect, the pious Jews did in those times, however (1 Mace. i. 62 f.; 2 Mace. v. 27), stands on the ground of the law; and the aversion to eat anything that was unclean, or to defile themselves at all in heathen lands, did not for the first time spring up in the time of the Maccabees, nor yet in the time of the exile, but is found already existing in these threatenings in Hos. ix. 3 f., Amos vii. 17. Daniel's resolution to refrain from such unclean food flowed therefore from fidelity to the law, and from stedfastness to the faith that "man lives not by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord " (Deut. viii. 3), and from the assurance that God would bless the humbler provision which he asks for himself, and would by means of it make him and his friends as strong and vigorous as the other youths who did eat the costly provision from the king's table. Firm in this conviction, he requested the chief chamberlain to free him' and his three friends from the use of the food and drink brought from the royal table. And the Lord was favourable to him, so that his request was granted.

Ver. 9. 1?r6 |ro, to procure favour for any one, cf. 1 Kings viii. 30, Ps. cvi. 46, Neh. i. 11. The statement that God gave Daniel favour with the chief chamberlain, refers to the fact that he did not reject the request at once, as one not to be complied with, or as punishable, but, esteeming the religious conviction out of which it sprang, pointed only to the danger into which a disregard of the king's command would bring him, thus revealing the inclination of his heart to grant the request. This willingness of the prince of the eunuchs was the effect of divine grace.

Ver. 10. The words TO& "IPK = ncfctf (Song i. 7), for why should he see? have the force of an emphatic denial, as nsj in Gen. xlvii. 15, 19, 2 Chron. xxxii. 4, and as n&p *] in Ezra vii. 23, and are equivalent to " he must not indeed see." VpVi, morose, disagreeable, looking sad, here, a pitiful look in consequence of inferior food, corresponding to a/cvOpccTros in Matt. vi. 16. *?B is to be understood before D*!j!1j according to the comparatio decurtata frequently found in Hebrew; cf. Ps. iv. 8, xviii. 34, etc. DFQ'rn with 1 relat. depends on na?: and ye shall bring into danger, so that ye bring into danger. BJfcOViK 3>n, make the head guilty, i.e. make it that one forfeits his head, his life.

Vers. 11-16. When Daniel knew from the answer of the chief that he would grant the request if he were only free from personal responsibility in the matter, he turned himself to the officer who was under the chief chamberlain, whom they were immediately subject to, and entreated him to make trial for ten days, permitting them to use vegetables and water instead of the costly provision and the wine furnished by the king, and to deal further with them according as the result would be. W?«Tj having the article, is to be regarded as an appellative, expressing the business or the calling of the man. The translation, steward or chief, cook, is founded on the explanation of the word as given by Haug (Ewald's bibl. Jahrbb. v. p. 159 f.) from the New Persian word mel, spirituous liquors, wine, corresponding to the Zend, madhu (fieOv), intoxicating drink, and ">¥ = card, Sanscr. ciras, the head; hence overseer over the drink, synonymous with HgBbrij Isa. xxxvi. 2. — NJ DJ? try, 1 beseech thee, thy servants, i.e. try it with us, ten days. Ten, in the decimal system the number of completeness or conclusion, may, according to circumstances, mean a long time or only a proportionally short time. Here it is used in the latter sense, because ten days are sufficient to show the effect of the kind of food on the appearance. D*$HJ, food from the vegetable kingdom, vegetables, leguminous fruit. Ver. 13. UWD is singular, and is used with *KT in the plural because two subjects follow, n8"ifl "1JPK3, as thou slialt see, viz. our appearance, Le. as thou shalt then find it, act accordingly. In this proposal Daniel trusted in the help of God, and God did not put his confidence to shame.1 The youths throve so visibly on the vegetables and water, that the steward relieved them wholly from the necessity of eating from the royal table. Ver. 15. ">;^i ^l?, fat, well nourished in flesh, is grammatically united to the suffix of DrPKiDj from which the pronoun is easily supplied in thought. Ver. 16. NBO, took away = no more gave.

Vers. 17-21. The progress of the young men in the wisdom of the Chaldeans, and their appointment to the service of the king.

As God blessed the resolution of Daniel and his three friends that they would not defile themselves by the food, He also blessed the education which they received in the literature ("^9, ver. 17 as ver. 4) and wisdom of the Chaldeans, so that the whole four made remarkable progress therein. But besides this, Daniel obtained an insight into all kinds of visions and dreams, i.e. he attained great readiness in interpreting visions and dreams. This is recorded regarding him because of what follows in this book, and is but a simple statement of the fact, without any trace of vainglory. Instruction in the wisdom of the Chaldeans was, besides, for Daniel and his three friends a test of their faith, since the wisdom of the Chaldeans, from the nature of the case, was closely allied to the Chaldean idolatry and heathen superstition, which the learners of this wisdom might easily be led to adopt. But that Daniel and his friends learned only the Chaldean wisdom without adopting the heathen element which was mingled with it, is evidenced from the stedfastness in the faith with which at a later period, at the danger of their lives (cf. Dan. iii. 6), they stood aloof from all participation in idolatry, and in regard to Daniel in particular, from the deep glance into the mysteries of the kingdom of God which lies before us in his prophecies, and bears witness of the clear

1 The request is perfectly intelligible from the nature of living faith, without our having recourse to Calvin's supposition, that Daniel had received by secret revelation the assurance that such would be the result if he and his companions were permitted to live on vegetables. The confidence of living faith which hopes in the presence and help of God is fundamentally different from the eager expectation of miraculous interference of a Maccabean Jew, which C. v. Lengeike and other deibts and atheists wish to find here in Daniel.

separation between the sacred and the profane. But he needed to be deeply versed in the Chaldean wisdom, as formerly Moses was in the wisdom of Egypt (Acts vii. 22), so as to be able to put to shame the wisdom of this world by the hidden wisdom of God.

Ver. 18. After the expiry of the period of three years the youths were brought before the king. They were examined by him, and these four were found more intelligent and discriminating than all the others that had been educated along with them (^3D, u than all," refers to the other Israelitish youths, ver. 3, that had been brought to Babylon along with Daniel and his friends), and were then appointed to his service. ^W, as in ver. 5, of standing as a servant before his master. The king found them indeed, in all matters of wisdom about which he examined them, to excel all the wise men in the whole of his kingdom. Of the two classes of the learned men of Chaldea, who are named instar omnium in ver. 20, see at ch. ii. 2.

In ver. 21 the introduction to the book is concluded with a general statement as to the period of Daniel's continuance in the office appointed to him by God. The difficulty which the explanation of W offers is not removed by a change of the reading into *rP1j since Daniel, according to ch. x. 1, lived beyond the first year of Cyrus and received divine revelations. *W marks the terminus ad quern in a wide sense, i.e. it denotes a termination without reference to that which came after it. The first year of king Cyrus is, according to 2 Chron. xxxvi. 22, Ezra i. 1, vi. 3, the end of the Babylonish exile, and the date, u to the first year of king Cyrus," stands in close relation to the date in ver. 1, Nebuchadnezzar's advance against Jerusalem and the first taking of the city, which forms the commencement of the exile; so that the statement/- Daniel continued unto the first year of king Cyrus," means only that he lived and acted during the whole period of the exile in Babylon, without reference to the fact that his work continued after the termination of the exile. Cf. the analogous statement, Jer. i. 2 f., that Jeremiah prophesied in the days of Josiah and Jehoiakim to the end of tHe eleventh year of Zedekiah, although his book contains prophecies also of a date subsequent to the taking of Jerusalem. W stands neither for W, he lived, nor absolutely in the sense of he existed, was present; for though nvi means existere, to be, yet it is never used absolutely in this sense, as nvi? to live, but always only so that the a how " or " where " of the being or existence is either expressly stated, or at least is implied in the connection. Tims here also the qualification of the u being" must be supplied from the context. The expression will then mean, not that he lived at the court, or in Babylon, or in high esteem with the king, but more generally, in the place to which God had raised him in Babylon by his wonderful endowments.

This Part contains in six chapters as many reports regarding the successive forms and the natural character of the world-power. It begins (ch. ii.) and ends (ch. vii.) with a revelation from God regarding its historical unfolding in four great world-kingdoms following each other, and their final overthrow by the kingdom of God, which shall continue for ever. Between these chapters (ii. and vii.) there are inserted four events belonging to the times of the first and second world-kingdom, which partly reveal the attempts of the rulers of the world to compel the worshippers of the true God to pray to their idols and their gods, together with the failure of this attempt (ch. iii. and vi.), and partly the humiliations of the rulers of the world, who were boastful of their power, under the judgments of God (ch. iv. and v.), and bring under our consideration the relation of the rulers of this world to the Almighty God of heaven and earth and to the true fearers of His name. The narratives of these four events follow each other in chronological order, because they are in actual relation bound together, and therefore also the occurrences (ch. v. and vi.) which belong to the time subsequent to the vision in ch. vii. are placed before this vision, so that the two revelations regarding the development of the world-power form the frame within which is contained the historical section which describes the character of that world-power.

When Daniel and his three friends, after the completion of their education, had entered on the service of the Chaldean king, Nebuchadnezzar dreamed a dream which so greatly moved him, that he called all the wise men of Babylon that they might make known to him the dream and give the interpretation of it; and when they were not able to do this, he gave forth the command (vers. 1-13) that they should all be destroyed. But Daniel interceded with the king and obtained a respite, at the expiry of which he promised (vers. 14-18) to comply with his demand. In answer to his prayers and those of his friends, God revealed the secret to Daniel in a vision (vers. 19-23), so that he was not only able to tell the king his dream (vers. 24-36), but also to give him its interpretation (vers. 37-45); whereupon Nebuchadnezzar praised the God of Daniel as the true God, and raised him to high honours and dignities (vers. 46-49). It has justly been regarded as a significant thing, that it wTas Nebuchadnezzar, the founder of the world-power, who first saw in a dream the whole future development of the world-power. u The world-power," as Auberlen properly remarks, "must itself learn in its first representative, who had put an end to the kingdom of God [the theocracy], what its own final destiny would be, that, in its turn overthrown, it would be for ever subject to the kingdom of God." This circumstance also is worthy of notice, that Nebuchadnezzar did not himself understand the revelation which he received, but the prophet Daniel, enlightened by God, must interpret it to him.1

1 According to Bleek, Lengerke, Hitz., Ew., and others, the whole narrative is to be regarded as a pure invention, as to its plan formed in imitation of the several statements of the narrative in Gen. xli. of Pharaoh's dream and its interpretation by Joseph the Hebrew, when the Egyptian wise men were unable to do so. Nebuchadnezzar is the copy of Pharaoh, and at the same time the type of Antiochus Epiphanes, who was certainly a half- mad despot, as Nebuchadnezzar is here described to be, although he was not so in reality. But the resemblance between Pharaoh's dream and that of Nebuchadnezzar consists only in that (1) both kings had significant dreams which their own wise men could not interpret to them, but which were interpreted by Israelites by the help of God; (2) Joseph and Daniel in a similar manner, but not in the same words, directed the kings to God (cf. Gen. xli. 16, Dan. ii. 27, 28); and (3) that in both narratives the word DJJB [was disquieted'] is used (Gen. xli. 8, Dan. ii. 1, 3).

In all other respects the narratives are entirely different. But "the resemblance," as Hen gst. has already well remarked (Beitr. i. p. 82), "is explained partly from the great significance which in ancient times was universally attached to dreams and their interpretation, partly from the dispensations of divine providence, which at different times has made use of this means for the deliverance of the chosen people." In addition to this, Kran., p. 70, has not less appropriately said: " But that only one belonging to the people of God should in both cases have had communicated to him the interpretation of the dream, is not more to be wondered at than that there is a true God who morally and spiritually supports and raises those who know and acknowledge Him,

Vers. 1-13. The dream of Nebuchadnezzar and the inability of the Chaldean wise men to interpret it. — By the 1 copulative standing at the commencement of this chapter the following narrative is connected with ch. i. 21. " We shall now discover what the youthful Daniel became, and what he continued to be to the end of the exile" (Klief.). The plur. rrittpn (dreams, vers. 1 and 2), the singular of which occurs in ver. 3, is not the plur. of definite universality (Hav., Maur., Klief.), but of intensive fulness, implying that the dream in its parts contained a plurality of subjects. BVSnn (fr0m DJ73, to thrust, to strike, as DVS, an anvil, teaches, to be tossed hither and thither) marks great internal disquietude^ In ver. 3 and in Gen. xli. 8, as in Ps. lxxvii. 5, it is in the Niphal form, but in ver. 1 it is in Hithp., on which Kran. finely remarks: u The Hithpael heightens the conception of internal unquiet lying in the Niphal to the idea that it makes itself outwardly manifest." His sleep was gone. This is evidenced without doubt by the last clause of ver. 1, nnvu V^y. These interpretations are altogether wrong: — u His sleep came upon him, i.e. he began again to sleep " (Calvin); or " his sleep was against him," i.e. was an aversion to him, was troublesome (L. de Dieu); or, as Hav. also interprets it, " his sleep offended him, or was like a burden heavy upon him; " for nvij does not mean to fall, and thus does not agree with the thought expressed. The Niph. rPHJ means to have become, been, happened. The meaning has already been rightly expressed by Theodoret in the words iyivero air avrov, according to psychological laws, even in a peculiar -way." Moreover, if the word DJJD was really borrowed from Gen. xli. 8, that would prove nothing more than that Daniel had read the books of Moses. But the grounds on which the abovenamed critics wish to prove the unhistorical character of this narrative are formed partly from a superficial consideration of the whole narrative and a manifestly false interpretation of separate parts of it, and partly from the dogmatic prejudice that " a particular foretelling of a remote future is not the nature of Hebrew prophecy," i.e. in other words, that there is no prediction arising from a supernatural revelation. Against the other grounds Kran. has already very truly remarked: " That the narrative of the actual circumstances wants (cf. Hitz. p. 17) proportion and unity, is not corroborated by a just view of the situation; the whole statement rather leaves the impression of a lively, fresh immediateness, in which a careful consideration of the circumstances easily furnishes the means for filling up the details of the brief sketch." Hence it follows that the contents of the dream show not the least resemblance to Pharaoh's dream, and in the whole story there is no trace seen of a hostile relation of Nebuchadnezzar and his courtiers to Judaism; nay rather Nebuchadnezzar's relation to the God of Daniel presents a decided contrast to the mad rage of Antiochus Epiphanes against the Jewish religion.

ami in the Vulgate by the words " fugit ab Wo;" and Berth., Ges., and others have with equal propriety remarked, that n?':™ ^n?^ corresponds in meaning with rrn niw, ch. vi. 19 (18), and rirj> HTH, Esth. vi. 1. This sense, to have been, however, does not conduct to the meaning given by Klief.: his sleep had been upon him; it was therefore no more, it had gone; for u to have been" is not "to be no more," but " to be finished," past, gone. This meaning is confirmed by WVU, ch. viii. 27: it was done with me, I was gone. The ivy stands not for the dative, but retains the meaning, over, upon, expressing the influence on the mind, as e.g. Jer. viii. 18, Hos. xi. 8, Ps. xlii. 6, 7, 12, xliii. 5, etc., which in German we express by the word bei or fur.

The reason of so great disquietude we may not seek in the circumstance that on awaking he could not remember the dream. This follows neither from ver. 3, nor is it psychologically probable that so impressive a dream, which on awaking he had forgotten, should have yet sorely disquieted his spirit during his waking hours. " The disquiet was created in him, as in Pharaoh (Gen. xli.), by the specially striking incidents of the dream, and the fearful, alarming apprehensions with reference to his future fate connected therewith" (Kran.).

Ver. 2. In the disquietude of his spirit the king commanded all his astrologers and wise men to come to him, four classes of whom are mentioned in this verse. 1. The D^p"]n? who wrere found also in Egypt (Gen. xli. 24). They are so named from Bin, a u stylus " — those who went about with the stylus, the priestly class of the lepo- 7 pafi/iarei^, those learned in the sacred writings and in literature. 2. The B^?tf, conjurers, from ^^ or *)KU, to breathe, to blow, to whisper; for they practised their incantations by movements of the breath, as is shown by the Arabic \^Ju, flavit ut prcestigiator in nexos a se nodos, incantavit, with wdiich it is compared by Hitz. and Kran. 3. The DW3D, magicians, found also in Egypt (Ex. vii. 11), and, according to Isa. xlvii. 9, 12, a powerful body in Babylon. 4. The DV:|^3, the priest caste of the Chaldeans, who are named, vers. 4, 10, and ch. i. 4, instar omnium as the most distinguished class among the Babylonian wise men. According to Herod, i. 171, and Diod. Sic. ii. 24, the Chaldeans appear to have formed the priesthood in a special sense, or to have attended to the duties specially devolving on the priests. This circumstance, that amongst an Aramaic people the priests in a stricter sense were called Chaldeans, is explained, as at p. 78, from the fact of the ancient supremacy of the Chaldean people in Babylonia.

Besides these four classes there is also a fifth, ver. 27, ch. iv. 4 (7), v. 7, 11, called the P.J3, the astrologers, not haruspices, from "ill, " to cut flesh to pieces," but the determiners of the rnil, the fatum or the fata, who announced events by the appearances of the heavens (cf. Isa. xlvii. 13), the forecasters of nativities, horoscopes, who determined the fate of men from the position and the movement of the stars at the time of their birth. These different classes of the priests and the learned are comprehended, ver. 12 ff., under the general designation of P^an (cf. also Isa. xliv. 25, Jer. 1. 35), and they formed a o-varrj/jia, i.e. collegium (Diod. Sic. ii. 31), under a president (P^D:n, ver. 48), who occupied a high place in the state; see at ver. 48. These separate classes busied themselves, without doubt, with distinct branches of the Babylonian wisdom. While each class cultivated a separate department, yet it was not exclusively, but in such a manner that the activities of the several classes intermingled in many ways. This is clearly seen from what is said of Daniel and his companions, that they were trained in all the wisdom of the Chaldeans (ch. i. 17), and is confirmed by the testimony of Diod. Sic. (ii. 29), that the Chaldeans, who held almost the same place in the state that the priests in Egypt did, while applying themselves to the service of the gods, sought their greatest glory in the study of astrology, and also devoted themselves much to prophecy, foretelling future things, and by means of lustrations, sacrifices, and incantations seeking to turn away evil and to secure that which was good. They possessed the knowledge of divination from omens, of expounding of dreams and prodigies, and of skilfully casting horoscopes.

That he might receive an explanation of his dream, Nebuchadnezzar commanded all the classes of the priests and men skilled in wisdom to be brought before him, because in an event which was to him so weighty he must not only ascertain the facts of the case, but should the dream announce some misfortune, he must also adopt the means for averting it. In order that the correctness of the explanation of the dream might be ascertained, the stars must be examined, and perhaps other means of divination must be resorted to. The proper priests could by means of sacrifices make the gods favourable, and the conjurers and magicians by their arts endeavour to avert the threatened misfortune.

wished to know the dream itself or its import. The wise men (ver, 4) understood his words as if he desired only to know the meaning of it; but the king replied (ver. 5 ff.) that they must tell him both the dream and its interpretation. But this request on the part of the king does not quite prove that he had forgotten the dream, as Bleek, v. Leng., and others maintain, founding thereon the objection against the historical veracity of the narrative, that Nebuchadnezzar's demand that the dream should be told to him was madness, and that there was no sufficient reason for his rage (ver. 12). On the contrary, that the king had not forgotten hifi dream, and that there remained only some oppressive recollection that he had dreamed, is made clear from ver. 9, where the king says to the Chaldeans, u If ye cannot declare to me the dream, ye have taken in hand to utter deceitful words before me; therefore tell me the dream, that I may know that ye will give to me also the interpretation." According to this, Nebuchadnezzar wished to hear the dream from the wise men that he might thus have a guarantee for the correctness of the interpretation which they might give. He could not thus have spoken to them if he had wholly forgotten the dream, and had only a dark apprehension remaining in his mind that he had dreamed. In this case he would neither have offered a great reward for the announcement of the dream, nor have threatened severe punishment, or even death, for failure in announcing it. For then he wquld only have given the Chaldeans the opportunity, at the cost of truth, of declaring any dream with an- interpretation. But as threatening and promise on the part of the king in that case would have been unwise, so also on the side of the wise men their helplessness in complying with the demand of the king would have been incomprehensible. If the king had truly forgotten the dream, they had no reason to be afraid of their lives if they had given some self-conceived dream with an interpretation of it; for in that case he could not have accused them of falsehood and deceit, and punished them on that account. If, on the contrary, he still knew the dream which so troubled him, and the contents of which he desired to hear from the Chaldeans, so that he might put them to the proof whether he might trust in their interpretation, then neither his demand nor the severity of his proceeding was irrational. " The magi boasted that by the help of the gods they could reveal deep and hidden things. If this pretence is well founded — so concluded Nebuchadnezzar— then it must be as easy for them to make known to me my dream as its interpretation; and since they could not do the former, he as rightly held them to be deceivers, as the people did the priests of Baal (1 Kings xviii.) because their gods answered not by fire." Hengst.

Ver. 4. The Chaldeans, as speaking for the whole company, understand the word of the king in the sense most favourable for themselves, and they ask the king to tell them the dream. ^?T5 for VlDK*^ which as a rule stands before a quotation, is occasioned by the addition of nWK, and the words which follow are zeugmatically joined to it. Aramaic, i.e. in the native language of Babylonia, where, according to Xenoph. (Cyrop. vii. 5), the Syriac, i.e. the Eastern Aramaic dialect, was spoken. From the statement here, that the Chaldeans spoke to the king in Aramaic, one must not certainly conclude that Nebuchadnezzar spoke the Aryan-Chaldaic language of his race. The remark refers to the circumstance that the following words are recorded in the Aramaic, as Ezra iv. 7. Daniel wrote this and the following chapters in Aramaic, that he might give the prophecy regarding the world-power in the language of the world-power, which under the Chaldean dynasty was native in Babylon, the Eastern Aramaic. The formula, " O king, live for ever," was the usual salutation when the king was addressed, both at the Chaldean and the Persian court (cf. ch. iii. 9, v. 10, vi. 7, 22 [6, 21]; Neh. ii. 3). In regard to the Persian court, see ^Elian, var. hist. i. 32. With the kings of Israel this form of salutation was but rarely used: 1 Sam. x. 24; 1 Kings i. 31. The Kethiv (text) T^Vp, with Jod before the suffix, supposes an original form "H^Vr here, as at ver. 26, ch. iv. 16, 22, but it is perhaps only the etymological mode of writing for the form with a long, analogous to the Hebr. suffix form vy for IV, since the Jod is often wanting; cf. ch. iv. 24, v. 10, etc. A form fc^N— lies at the foundation of the form OTBO; the Keri (margin) substitutes the usual Chaldee form '*nta from KNHK'S, with the insertion of the litera quiescib. \ homog. to the quies. e, while in the Kethiv the original Jod of the sing. ^BG is retained instead of the substituted N, thus NJ^feO. This reading is perfectly warranted (cf. ch. iii. 2, 8, 24; Ezra iv. 12, 13) by the analogous method of formation of the stat. emphat. plur. in existing nouns in s— in biblical Chaldee.

Ver. 5. The meaning of the king's answer shapes itself differently according to the different explanations given of the words fcHTX *I8 nrfep. The word N^, which occurs only again in the same phrase in ver. 8, is regarded, in accordance with the translations of Theodot., o X070? air ifiov aireajr), and of the Vulg., " sermo recessit a me" as a verb, and as of like meaning with •!«, " to go away or depart," and is therefore rendered by M. Geier, Berth., and others in the sense, " the dream has escaped from me;" but Ges., Hay., and many older interpreters translate it, on the contrary, " the command is gone out from me." But without taking into account that the punctuation of the word *ntK is not at all that of a verb, for this form can neither be a particip. nor the 3d pers. pret. fern., no acknowledgment of the dream's having escaped from him is made; for such a statement would contradict what was said at ver. 3, and would not altogether agree with the statement of ver. 8. nnpp is not the dream. Besides, the supposition that "1TX is equivalent to??tf, to go away, depart, is not tenable. The change of the S into 1 is extremely rare in the Semitic, and is not to be assumed in the word bfN, since Daniel himself uses b?K, ch. ii. 17, 24, vi. 19, 20, and also Ezra, iv. 23, v. 8, 15. Moreover ^rs has not the meaning of N^, to g° om% *0 ta^e one's departure, but corresponds with the Hebr. ipn, to go. Therefore Winer, Hengst., Ibn Esr. [Aben Ezra], Saad., and other rabbis interpret the word as meaning Jirmus: " the word stands firm; " cf. ch. vi. 13 (12), Krrk> nw ("the thing is true"). This interpretation is justified by the actual import of the words, as it also agrees with ver. 8; but it does not accord with ver. 5. Here (in ver. 5) the declaration of the certainty of the king's word was superfluous, because all the royal commands were unchangeable. For this reason also the meaning cr7rou8atw?, studiously, earnestly, as Hitz., by a fanciful reference to the Persian, whence he has derived it, has explained it, is to be rejected. Much more satisfactory is the derivation from the Old Persian word found on inscriptions, dzanda, " science," " that which is knowm," given by Delitzsch (Herz.'s Realenc. iii. p. 274), and adopted by Kran. and Klief.1 Accordingly Klief. thus interprets the phrase: cl let the word from me be known," " be it known to you; " which is more suitable obviously than that of Kran.: " the command is, so far as regards

1 In regard to the explanation of the word fcHTX as given above, it is, however, to be remarked that it is not confirmed, and Delitzsch has for the present given it up, because — as he has informed me — the word azda, which appears once in the large inscription of Behistan (Bisutun) and twice in the inscription of Nakhschi-Rustam, is of uncertain reading and meaning. Spiegel explains it " unknown," from zan, to know, and a privativum.

me, made public." For the king now for the first time distinctly and definitely says that he wishes not only to hear from the wise men the interpretation, but also the dream itself, and declares the punishment that shall visit them in the event of their not being able to comply. |Wn 12V, /jlcXt) iroieiv, 2 Mace. i. 16, LXX. in Dan. iii. 39, Sianeki^ecrOai) to cut in pieces, a punishment that was common among the Babylonians (ch. iii. 39, cf. Ezek. xvi. 40), and also among the Israelites in the case of prisoners of war (cf. 1 Sam. xv. 33). It is not, however, to be confounded with the barbarous custom which was common among the Persians, of mangling particular limbs. y}3, m Ezra vi. 11 v}3, dunghill, sink. The changing of their houses into dunghills is not to be regarded as meaning that the house built of clay would be torn down, and then dissolved by the rain and storm into a heap of mud, but is to be interpreted according to 2 Kings x. 27, where the temple of Baal is spoken of as having been broken down and converted into' private closets; cf. Hav. in loco. The Keri JViaynri without the Dagesh in 2 might stand as the Ketliiv for Ithpaal, but is apparently the Ithpeal, as at ch. iii. 29, Ezra vi. 11. As to fta^S, it is to be remarked that Daniel uses only the suffix forms p3 and |in, while with Ezra Db and p are interchanged (see above, p. 45), which are found in the language of the Targums and might be regarded as Hebraisms, while the forms ])2 and |in are peculiar to the Syriac and the Samaritan dialects. This distinction does not prove that the Aramaic of Daniel belongs to a period later than that of Ezra (Hitz., v. Leng.), but only that Daniel preserves more faithfully the familiar Babylonian form of the Aramaic than does the Jewish scribe Ezra.

Ver. 6. The rigorous severity of this edict accords with the character of Oriental despots and of Nebuchadnezzar, particularly in his dealings with the Jews (2 Kings xxv. 7, 18 ff.; Jer. xxxix. 6 f., Hi. 10 f., 24-27). In the promise of rewards the explanation of tt}2) (in the plur. £2t?3?, ch. v. 17) is disputed; its rendering by "money," "gold" (by Eichh. and Berth.), has been long ago abandoned as incorrect. The meaning gift, present, is agreeable to the context and to the ancient versions; but its derivation formed from the Chald. DD, Pealp. of TI3, erogavit, expendit, by the substitution of 3 for tf and the excision of the second T from nTiinp, in the meaning largitio amplior, the Jod in the plural form being explained from the affinity of verbs v'y and n? (Ges. Thes. p. 842, and Kran.), is highly improbable. The derivation from the Persian nuvdzan, nuvdzisch, to caress, to flatter, then to make a present to (P. v. Bohlen), or from the Sanscr. namas, present, gift (Hitz.), or from the Vedish bag, to give, to distribute, and the related New Persian bdj (bash), a present (Haug), are also very questionable. \\}?, on that account, therefore (cf. ver. 9 and ch. iv. 24), formed from the prepos.? and the demonstrative adverb |H, has in negative sentences (as the Hebr. *3 and \\0) the meaning but, rather (ch. ii. 30), and in a pregnant sense, only (ch. ii. 11, iii. 28, vi. 8), without \\h being derived in such instances from NP and p = to DN

Ver. 7. The wise men repeat their request, but the king persists that they only justify his suspicion of them by pressing such a demand, and that he saw that they wished to deceive him with a self-conceived interpretation of the dream. «™^ is not, as Hitz. proposes, to be changed into Fn^S*. The form is a Hebr. stat. emphat. for *?}#?% as e.g. n^P, ver. 5, is changed into KripB in vers. 8 and 11, and in biblical Chaldee, in final syllables n is often found instead of k. — Ver. 8. y&!*?> an adverbial expression, to be sure, certainly, as B6?i? IP, truly, ver. 47, and other adverbial forms. The words fXXI JVUK WW «I do not mean either " that ye wish to use or seize the favourable time * (Hav., Kran.), or " that ye wish to buy up the present perilous moment," i.e. bring it within your power, become masters of the time (Hitz.), but simply, that ye buy, that is wish to gain time (Ges., Maur., etc.). py jar = tempus emere in Cicero. Nothing can be here said of a favourable moment, for there was not such a time for the wise men, either in the fact that Nebuchadnezzar had forgotten his dream (Hav.), or in the curiosity of the king with reference to the interpretation of the dream, on which they could speculate, expecting that the king might be induced thereby to give a full communication of the dream (Kran.). But for the wise men, in consequence of the threatening of the king, the crisis was indeed full of danger; but it is not to be overlooked that they appeared to think that they could control the crisis, bringing it under their own power, by their willingness -to interpret the dream if it were reported to them. Their repeated request that the dream should be told to them shows only their purpose to gain time and save their lives, if they now truly believed either that the king could not now distinctly remember his dream, or that by not repeating it he wished to put them to the test. Thus the king says to them: I see from your hesitation that ye are not sure of your case; and since ye at the same time think that I have forgotten the dream, therefore ye wish me, by your repeated requests to relate the dream, only to gain time, to extend the case, because ye fear the threatened punishment (Klief.). ^ p^P'?^^ wholly because; not, notwithstanding that (Hitz.). As to the last words of ver. 8, see under ver. 5.

Ver. 9. |n *| is equivalent to DK "W, quodsi. " The ^ supposes the fact of the foregoing passage, and brings it into express relation to the conditional clause" (Kran.). iforn does not mean, your design or opinion, or your lot (Mich., Hitz., Maur.), but Tn is law, decree, sentence; H^l, the sentence that is going forth or has gone forth against you, i.e. according to ver. 5, the sentence of death, fnn, one, or the one and no other. This judgment is founded on the following passage, in which the cop.) is to be explained as equivalent to namely. fiJVnK^,"1?1?) lies and pernicious icords, are united together for the purpose of strengthening the idea, in the sense of wicked lies (Hitz.). pnjDfn is not to be read, as Hav., v. Leng., Maur., and Kran. do, as the Aphel p»njDrn: ye have prepared or resolved to say; for in the Aphel this word (|OT) means to appoint or summon a person, but not to prepare or appoint a thing (see Buxt. Lex. Tal. s. v.). And the supposition that the king addressed the Chaldeans as the speakers appointed by the whole company of the wise men (Kran.) has no place in the text. The Kethiv IWUBW? is to be read as Ithpa. for JIWISW according to the Keri (cf. *3ffl for l^TH, Isa. i. 16), meaning inter se convenire, as the old interpreters rendered it. " Till the time be changed," i.e. till the king either drop the matter, or till they learn something more particular about the dream through some circumstances that may arise. The lies which Nebuchadnezzar charged the wise men with, consisted in the explanation which they promised if he would tell them the dream, while their desire to hear the dream contained a proof that they had not the faculty of revealing secrets. The words of the king clearly show that he knew the dream, for otherwise he would not have been able to know whether the wise men spoke the truth in telling him the dream (Klief.).

Ver. 10. Since the king persisted in his demand, the Chaldeans were compelled to confess that they could not tell the dream. This confession, however, they seek to conceal under the explanation that compliance with the king's request was beyond human power, — a request which no great or mighty king had ever before made of any magician or astrologer, and which was possible only with the gods, who however do not dwell among mortals. ^?3i3"?3 does not mean quam ob rem, wherefore, as a particle expressive of a consequence (Ges.), but is here used in the sense of because, assigning a reason. The thought expressed is not: because the matter is impossible for men, therefore no king has ever asked any such thing; but it is this: because it has come into the mind of no great and mighty king to demand any such thing, therefore it is impossible for men to comply with it. They presented before the king the fact that no king had ever made such a request as a proof that the fulfilling of it was beyond human ability. The epithets great and mighty are here not mere titles of the Oriental kings (Hav.), but are chosen as significant. The mightier the king, so much the greater the demand, he believed, he might easily make upon a subject.

Yer. 11. ]\0, but only, see under ver. 6. In the words, whose dwelling is not with flesh, there lies neither the idea of higher and of inferior gods, nor the thought that the gods only act among men in certain events (Hav.), but only the simple thought of the essential distinction between gods and men, so that one may not demand anything from weak mortals which could be granted only by the gods as celestial beings. 8*^3, flesh, in opposition to HVlj marks the human nature according to its weakness and infirmity; cf. Isa. xxxi. 3, Ps. lvi. 5. The king, however, does not admit this excuse, but falls into a violent passion, and gives a formal command that the wise men, in whom he sees deceivers abandoned by the gods, should be put to death. This was a dreadful command; but there are illustrations of even greater cruelty perpetrated by Oriental despots before him as well as after him. The edict (N^) is carried out, but' not fully. Not " all the wise men," according to the terms of the decree, were put to death, but |vl3|?riD N^sn, i.e. the wise men were put to death.

Ver. 13. While it is manifest that the decree was not carried fully out, it is yet clearer from what follows that the participle pptppno does not stand for the preterite, but has the meaning: the work of putting to death was begun. The participle also does not stand as the gerund: they were to be put to death, i.e. were condemned (Kran.), for the use of the passive participle as the gerund is not made good by a reference to JDTID, ch. ii. 45, and b^rn, ch. ii. 31. Even the command to kill all the wise men of Babylon is scarcely to be understood of all the wise men of the whole kingdom. The word Babylon may represent the Babylonian empire, or the province of Babylonia, or the city of Babylon only.

In the city of Babylon a college of the Babylonian wise men or Chaldeans was established, who, according to Strabo (xv. 1. 6), occupied a particular quarter of the city as their own; but besides this, there were also colleges in the province of Babylon at Hipparenum, Orchoe, which Plin. hist. nat. vi. 26 (30) designates as tertia Chaldceorum doctrina, at Borsippa, and other places. The wise men who were called (ver. 2) into the presence of the king, were naturally those who resided in the city of Babylon, for Nebuchadnezzar was at that time in his palace. Yet of those who had their residence there, Daniel and his companions were not summoned, because they had just ended their noviciate, and because, obviously, only the presidents or the older members of the several classes were sent for. But since Daniel and his companions belonged to the whole body of the wise men, they also were sought out that they might be put to death.