Chapter 2 Nebuchadnezzar's Dream And Its Consequences.
Nebuchadnezzar Dreams and Requires His Wise Men To Tell Him The Content of His Dream (Daniel 2:1-18).
‘And in the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar dreamed dreams, and his spirit was troubled and his sleep broke from him.'
The reader thoughts immediately turn back to Daniel 1:17. This could only be connected in some way with the expert in dreams.
The dreams were clearly vivid ones. Nebuchadnezzar was greatly disturbed and could no longer sleep. And the sense of unease continued on in the morning. He knew that the dreams had something very important to say to him, and he was desperate to know what it was. But as we shall see, he was not going to be satisfied with suave answers. He had had too much experience of interpreters of dreams to trust them. He wanted the truth, and these dreams were very important to him. The importance of dreams in the eyes of the ancient world cannot be over-exaggerated.
The plural ‘dreams' probably means that he saw what followed as a succession of dreams, into which he slipped in and out, rather than as just one dream. Alternately it may mean that he dreamed the same dream two or three times over (the singular is used later).
This was ‘in the second year of his reign'. Taking in the accession year that meant that it was actually in the third year by Babylonian reckoning, by which time Daniel and his friends had graduated. As we saw earlier ‘three years' simply meant part of a year (the end of the year of accession), then a year, (the first year of his reign), then part of a year, thus ending in the second year of his reign. Compare 2 Kings 18:9-10, which cover the fourth to sixth years of Hezekiah; and the constant reference to ‘three days' in Joshua 1-3 which clearly refer to differing time periods. (This also explains, something which is also confirmed by external usage among the Jews, why Jesus could be said to rise ‘on the third day', and yet ‘after three days'. The same usage had continued).