‘At the end of twelve months he was walking in the royal palace of Babylon. The king spoke and said, “Is not this Babylon the great which I have built for the royal dwelling place, by the might of my power and for the glory of my majesty?”
At the end of twelve months Nebuchadnezzar exalted himself as though he were a god, as he looked around at his great achievements and possessions. Babylon was at the height of its power and glory and it was enough to stir up his mania. He considered that his dwelling place almost compared with that of the gods.
Here we actually have a typical example of mania. A man exalted above the norm. A year had passed since his period of depression and his dream, and now he had become ‘manic', highly charged, and was on a high. He thus obtained an over-exalted view of himself, an extension of the pride that he no doubt always felt over his achievements. But we are not to see him as punished for the behaviour which was the result of his illness but for the underlying pride that resulted in it. However, he was so manic that it was a disturbing sign. His mental faculties were becoming ‘overheated', and strange behaviour often results.
‘The royal palace of Babylon.' Identified because there were many royal palaces, but intended also to stress the centrality of and importance of Babylon, as the following words demonstrate. He was excessively proud of this palace which he saw as the bond which bound the empire together, as ‘wondered at' by the people and as containing his own majesty. This pride in it comes out in the inscriptions. ‘Then I built the palace, the seat of my royalty, the bond of the race of men, the dwelling of joy and rejoicing', and again ‘In Babylon, my dear city which I love, was the palace, the house of wonder of the people, the bond of the land, the brilliant place, the abode of the majesty in Babylon'.
‘Which I have built.' His claim was justified for he was a great builder. The inscriptions tell us how he renovated the two great temples, those of Marduk in Babylon, and of Nebo in Borsippa, how he then restored fifteen other temples in Babylon and completed the two huge walls of the city, adding a large rampart. He rebuilt the palace of his father Nabopolassar and built the palace with which the hanging gardens of Babylon were associated, and these were but a few of his achievements.