The same hour was the thing fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar: and he was driven from men, and did eat grass as oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown like eagles' [feathers], and his nails like birds' [claws].
Ver. 33. The same hour was the thing fulfilled.] When least expected. The like befell the old world, Sodom, Pharaoh, Julian, &c. See 1 Thessalonians 5:2,3. As they say of the metal they make glass of, it is nearest melting when it shineth brightest; so are the wicked nearest destruction when at greatest lustre.
And he was driven from men.] By his own courtiers and subjects. In him it well appeared that mortality was but the stage of mutability. The like was to be seen in Nero, and many other Roman and Greek emperors; in Belisarius, Bajazet, our Richard II, and Henry VI, who, having been the most potent monarch for dominions that ever England had, was at last not the master of a mole hill, nor owner of his own liberty. Of Henry Holland, Duke of Exeter, grandchild to John of Gaunt, mention hath been made before. Within our remembrance, in the reign of King James, the Lord Cobham, having been a man of seven thousand pounds a year, and of a personal estate of thirty thousand pounds, came nevertheless to a miserable end; for before his death he was lousey for want of apparel and linen, and had starved, had not a trencher scraper, some time his servant at court, relieved him with scraps, in whose house he died, being so poor a place that he was forced to creep up a ladder through a little hole into his chamber. a The like strange change befell Sir Edward Greenill, of Milcot, in Warwickshire, whom I very well knew.
And did eat grass as oxen.] By a singular judgment of Almighty God, who came down from heaven, as it were, to fight a duel with this most proud man, inspectante toto mundo, in the view of all the world. b
And his body was wet with the dew of heaven.] Beside the brutish change of his mind, his body was much changed by the inclemency of the air, and by his feeding and living among wild beasts. Yet was he not in truth changed into a beast, as Bodin thinketh, so as that upward he was like an ox, and in his hinder parts like a lion, as others have fabled. The substance of his body was not changed, but only the quality of his substance and of his shape. Rupertus well concludeth that this was the greatest change that is mentioned in Scripture, excepting only that of Lot's wife, who was changed into a pillar of salt.
Till his hairs were grown like eagles' feathers.] Thick and black.
And his nails like bird's claws.] Long and sharp; so that in his shape he came nearer to a wild beast than to a man.
a Court of King James, p. 37.
b Rollock.