Daniel 2:30 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

This secret is not revealed to me for any wisdom that I have more than any living Namely, to merit such a discovery, or qualify me for receiving it. No praise is due to me on this occasion. Observe, reader, it well becomes those whom God has highly favoured and honoured, to be humble and low in their own eyes; and to lay aside all opinion of their own wisdom and worthiness, that God alone may have all the praise of what they are, and have, and do. But for their sakes that shall make known the interpretation to the king For the sake of Daniel's brethren and companions in tribulation, who had by their prayers helped him to obtain this discovery, and so might be said to make known the interpretation; that their lives might be spared, that they might come into favour and be preferred, and that all the people of the Jews might fare the better in their captivity for their sakes. This is the sense of the words, according to the common translation; but the marginal reading is thought by many to be more agreeable to the context, which if we follow, the meaning of the clause is, “Not for any wisdom of mine, but that the king may know the interpretation,” &c. “The impious king,” says Jerome, “had a prophetic dream, that, the saint interpreting it, God might be glorified, and the captives, and those who served God in captivity, might receive great consolation. We read the same thing of Pharaoh; not that Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar deserved to see such things, but that Joseph and Daniel, interpreting them, might be preferred to all others.” And, as Jerome observes afterward, “That Nebuchadnezzar might admire the grace of divine inspiration, he (Daniel) not only told him the dream which he was favoured with, but even the secret thoughts of his heart previous to the dream.”