“And in the days of those kings will the God of heaven set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed, nor will its sovereignty be left to another people. But it will break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it will stand for ever. Forasmuch as you saw that a stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver and the gold, the great God has made known to the king what will come about hereafter. And the dream is certain and its interpretation sure.”
‘In the days of those kings.' This naturally refers back to the previous verse. The final empire is ruled by a number of kings, including kings of the empires described. But in their day a kingdom will be set up, a kingdom, which replaces theirs, which will never be destroyed. Nor will it make alliances with the other kingdoms, yielding its sovereignty to them. It will have total liberty and freedom. It will ‘strike' all these empires, and by hitting their weakest point will bring them crashing down. Notice that all collapse, from the gold downwards. The whole basis of these empires, their might, their arrogance, their disunity, their representing false religion, all collapse at together. Truth will triumph. Faith in the God of heaven.
Perhaps Nebuchadnezzar saw the stone as referring to his descendants (possibly hinted at in chapter 3). Daniel does not disillusion him. But there is no doubt what Daniel means, as he makes clear later on. This is the kingdom of the people of God, the kingdom of the Messiah, the everlasting kingdom set up in heaven before the throne of God, and yet making its decisive impact on earth as world empire is destroyed (Daniel 7:13-14; Daniel 7:18; Daniel 7:27). It will not be vulnerable. Its triumph is guaranteed. And it will finally shatter all the other kingdoms, and fill the whole earth (compare Matthew 13:31-33).
‘Forasmuch as you saw that a stone was cut out of the mountain without hands.' ‘Cut out without hands' refers to the activity of God (compare Mark 14:58. See also Isaiah 51:1). ‘The stone' was a regular symbol of the Messianic idea, both as a foundation stone or cornerstone (Isaiah 28:16; Psalms 118:22), or as a stone that tripped men up and by which they were broken (Isaiah 8:14 compare Zechariah 12:3). It was not a far cry from that for the Messianic prince to become a destroying stone, demolishing the power of empire by striking at its foundations and making it topple (Daniel 7:26), once He had received the kingdom (Daniel 7:13-14). Isaiah 17:10; Isaiah 32:2 associate the Rock with God's protection of His people, which was the second stage for ‘the stone'.
Alternately we may see the stone as the Kingly Rule of God. But really the two go together. The King represents His Kingdom.
This working away at its weakest point, its roots of disunity and idolatry, until it toppled, was what the Kingly Rule of God and the Messiah accomplished for the Roman Empire. They smote its uncertainty, its dependence on idolatry, and it toppled and yielded, at least outwardly, to the Messiah. And this was what the stone accomplished in many kingdoms. They too were toppled and became outwardly God's people. And in the end the world will topple, and Christ's kingdom will become all in all. For its final fulfilment awaits His final triumph, when He comes in power and the kingdoms of the world finally collapse before Him, and what is outward is done away, and what is true shines through. Then will the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father (Matthew 13:43), and all evil will be done away. The empires will have vanished like the chaff from the threshingfloor, and His people will be with him in the everlasting kingdom in the new heaven and the new earth.
In the dream the smiting of the stone came almost instantaneously, for it was an apocalyptic vision. It was depicting the intervention in world history of God. But in the purposes of God it could happen over time. The collapse of empire would not necessarily come overnight. The arrival of the Kingly Rule of God was in one sense sudden. But the day of God, and the growth of the stone into a mountain, could take a thousand years or more (Psalms 90:4; 2 Peter 3:8). That would be instantaneous to God.
We can finally compare the idea here with the great millstone, picked up by the strong angel and cast into the sea, preparing for the destruction of Babylon, the great city, which itself represented empire (Revelation 18:21). There too such a stone was a symbol, but there it was of the judgment of God upon what was ungodly, for it was a millstone that ground things to powder, while this was a mighty rock hewn from the mountain of God (Isaiah 2:2-4).
‘The great God has made known to the king what will come about hereafter. And the dream is certain and its interpretation sure.' So Nebuchadnezzar was privileged by God to see the hopelessness of trusting to world empire. He could have found out what the stone represented. But his eyes were closed and instead he built a great image for men to worship. He had totally missed the point. And even though he was informed that the dream was certain, and that what it signified was true, he did not sufficiently seek its truth. The opportunity passed him by.