Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness [was] excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof [was] terrible.
Ver. 31. Thou, O king, sawest,] sc., By the force of thy fancy; for in sleep the reasonable soul cometh into the shop of fantasy, and there doth strange works, which are vented in our dreams.
And behold a great image.] A fit representation, and in a dream especially, of worldly greatness. An image, saith Theodoret, is but the figure of a thing, and not the thing itself; and this image in the text, speciem habet gigantaeam, et prorsus Chimaericam, was a kind of chimera.