Then Daniel requested of the king, and he set Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, over the affairs of the province of Babylon: but Daniel sat in the gate of the king.
Then Daniel requested of the king, and he set Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, over the affairs of the province of Babylon. Contrast this honourable remembrance of his humble friends in his elevation with the spirit of the children of the world, in the chief butler's case, who, after having promised to repay the debt of gratitude which he owed to Joseph through the interpretation of his dream, forgot about Joseph (Genesis 40:23; Ecclesiastes 9:15-16; Amos 6:6).
Daniel sat in the gate - the place of holding courts of justice and levees in the East (Esther 2:19; Job 29:7). So, "the Sublime Porte," or Gate, denotes the Sultan's government, his councils being formerly held in the entrance of his palace. Daniel was a chief counselor of the king, and president over the governors of the different orders into which the Magi were divided.
Remarks:
(1) Nebuchadnezzar, with all his worldly greatness, could not escape troubles of spirit (Daniel 2:1), which drove away sleep; whereas the sleep of the labouring man is generally sweet and sound. How often cares and restless anxieties are the attendants of that worldly elevation which is so much coveted by many!
(2) Nebuchadnezzar had been, during the night, while on his bed, pondering over the unprecedented greatness which he had attained, and meditating anxiously on the future destiny of his vast empire, when God met his thoughts with a revelation in a dream (Daniel 2:28-29). This was a mode of communication most consonant to the pagan mind, and well calculated to impress him. Men are often more eager to know the unseen future than to learn the path of duty and the way of salvation. Yet the latter is at once attainable and truly profitable to us: the former, if it were possible, which generally it is not, would add neither to our comfort or our sanctification. We do not find that Nebuchadnezzar was a better or a happier man after he knew the interpretation of the dream than before it. Nay, in the very next chapter we find him setting up a golden idol; and in the fourth chapter he is described as divinely driven out from among men, because of his blasphemous pride and arrogance.
(3) Nebuchadnezzar, the representative of the world-power, receives the dream, which sets forth the final overthrow of the world-kingdom by the kingdom of God. He who first overthrew the theocracy is made by God the very medium of announcing the downfall of not only his own, but of the three other successive world-empires, by means of the kingdom of heaven, then seemingly prostrate, but at last about to be the universal kingdom.
(4) He receives the dream; but one of the covenant-people alone can interpret it. The impotence of the wisest of (4) He receives the dream; but one of the covenant-people alone can interpret it. The impotence of the wisest of pagan sages is strikingly brought into view in the failure of the Chaldean soothsayers, when consulted as to the dream and its interpretation. It is the way of God to make men first feel the insufficiency of all creaturely wisdom and strength, before he shows them His own all-sufficient wisdom and power. Pretenders to supernatural knowledge run continual risk of detection, and so bring on themselves their own punishment (Daniel 2:5; Daniel 2:12-13). The Chaldeans' ignorance of the king's dream, a thing of the past, proved their inability to interpret its meaning, which concerned the future. They were therefore compelled, out of their own mouth, to convict themselves as impostors, and to confess that none on earth can reveal the future, except those whom the God of heaven enables to do so, unconsciously, and by anticipation, thereby avouching the divine inspiration of Daniel (Daniel 2:10-11). There was a man upon earth who could show the king's matter. Therefore, the God who taught him it must be above all their gods. Impostors are compelled by the God of truth to falsify themselves and justify Him.
(5) The Chaldeans asserted of their gods that their "dwelling is not with flesh." How comforting to us to know that the Divine "Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us," and thus became "God manifested in the flesh" (1 Timothy 3:16), and so able to sympathize with His brethren in the flesh, as a merciful and faithful high priest, in all things made like unto His brethren, whom through death He delivered from the power and fear of death (Hebrews 2:14-18).
(6) Daniel was given by the king "time," which was denied to the Chaldeans. That respite of time so granted was the means of saving not only Daniel's own life, but also that of the Chaldeans. How carefully ought Christians so to "redeem the time" (Daniel 2:8; Daniel 2:16) which is yet vouchsafed to them, as to obtain as well their own salvation as also that of others around them!
(7) Daniel's great instrument of averting the threat ened calamity was intercessory prayer. We can lay out our time to no better account for eternity than by "desiring mercies of the God of heaven" (Daniel 2:18). Daniel's chief reason for seeking "time" from the king (Daniel 2:16) was, he wished to engage his three friends (Daniel 2:17) to join him in prayer for the revelation of the "secret." The power of united prayer, when it is a reality, is irresistible; because Christ hath promised to keep back nothing that is for the glory of God and the good of his people from them, when they "agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask (Matthew 18:19). Our praying friends are our best friends. None is so great and good as to be above needing the intercessions of his fellow-saints on earth.
(8) When God revealed the secret to Daniel, Daniel ascribed the whole glory to Him who alone deserved it, "the God of heaven" (Daniel 2:19). "Blessed be the name of God forever and ever: for wisdom and might are His" (Daniel 2:29). It is right and just that our praises should correspond to God's goodness (Daniel 2:21-23). Let us, like Daniel, clearly recognize and avow that the vicissitudes of states, as well as their "times and seasons," are not the result of fortuitous circumstances, but of God's providence, and that these form part of His mighty scheme in the moral government of the world for the ultimate setting up of the universal kingdom of God and His Christ. Since all wisdom and light (Daniel 2:21-22) emanate from "the Father of lights," let us continually ask of Him who giveth liberally to all who ask (James 1:5): so shall "the eyes of our understanding be enlightened" (Ephesians 1:17-18).
(9) Daniel thanks and praises God as the "God of his fathers" (Daniel 2:23), thereby recognizing the truth that the grace which he now receives from God is in accordance with the covenant made by God with His people of old. The Lord's faithfulness to His everlasting covenant and promises is the great source of consolation to His children in times of difficulty and fear, and is their great theme of praise when they have experienced His saving mercies
(10) Daniel, being learned in Chaldean lore, could speak authoritatively as to what it could discover, and what it could not; and he plainly tells the king that it was utterly unable to show him his secret; but he adds, "There is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets" (Daniel 2:28). How great is the privilege of the servants of God, of whom it is written, "Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth His secret unto His servants the prophets"! (Amos 3:7.). In our Gospel dispensation our eyes are blessed in seeing, and our ears in hearing, things which many prophets and righteous men desired to see and hear, but saw not and heard not (Matthew 13:16-17; Luke 10:23-24). At the same time, as Daniel disclaims all merit in the interpretation of the dream (Daniel 2:3), ascribing it solely to the wisdom and grace of the All-wise, All-loving God, so it is the feeling of every true saint, God has revealed His Son in me (Galatians 1:15-16), not for any merit of mine, but "according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He hath made us accepted in the Beloved" (Ephesians 1:5-6).
(11) The design of the interpretation in respect to Nebuchadnezzar was, "that He might know the thoughts of his heart" (Daniel 2:30). The moral probation of men's character is one of the leading reasons of all God's dealings with us in providence and grace, in prosperity and adversity, in what He hides from us, and what he reveals to us of the future.
(12) The world-power, in relation to the kingdom of God (Daniel 2:31, note) is essentially one, while its manifestations in world-empires, whose course has affected the kingdom of God, have been, since Daniel's time inclusive four: therefore the colossal human image seen by Nebuchadnezzar, the head of the first world-empire, was one, though composed of four distinct metals, representing successively those four world-empires: namely, the golden head, representing Babylon in the person of Nebuchadnezzar; the breast and arms of silver, representing Medo-Parsia; the belly and thighs of brass, Graeco-Macedonia; the legs of iron, and feet partly iron and partly clay, Rome, and its modern offshoot, under which we live, the Germano-Slavonic empire, with which is closely connected the Gallic empire of Napoleonism.
The huge colossus of metal stands on fragile feet of mingled iron and clay, containing within themselves the elements of its downfall. Side by side with the image lay on the earth a seemingly insignificant stone, but one cut out from the everlasting mountain by the Almighty Spirit of God, without human hands (Daniel 2:34; Daniel 2:45). Though small, and unheeded at first, it had in it elements of duration, being compact in its homogeneous unity: whereas the world-power in its heterogeneous composition contained the ingredients of its final dissolution. The stone represents the kingdom of God, the fifth and everlasting world-wide empire of Messiah, which began in humiliation, but which at His second coming shall smite the image on the feet (Daniel 2:34), and become a great mountain, filling the whole earth (Daniel 2:35).
Originally cut out from the mountain, it ends in becoming a mountain; just so the kingdom of God, having come from the height of heaven, the mount of the Father's glory, and antitype to Zion, and having been framed by God Himself at the first, shall eventuate in the establishment of the kingdom of heaven on earth, and the dwelling of God with men (Revelation 21:3; Revelation 21:10-11). It is observable that the metals become baser and baser, and lessen in specific gravity, as they go downward, silver being less heavy and valuable than gold, brass than silver, and iron than brass, implying a successive degeneracy and deterioration from bad to worse. On the contrary, the kingdom of the stone, Christ Jesus, precious from the first, though a stone of stumbling to many, and to Israel especially, from humiliation at first, progresses to surpassing grandeur and universal glory at last (Psalms 118:22).
The world-kingdoms are, in spite of themselves, constrained unconsciously to minister toward the setting up of this coming kingdom of God, which is the final end toward which God is overruling all the affairs of the earth. Woe be to the anti-Christian faction of the ten kingdoms which, under the man of sin, shall be smitten by this stone! As the fourth kingdom of iron "broke in pieces" others (Daniel 2:40), so in just retribution shall itself, in the person of its last Christ-opposed representatives, be broken to pieces simultaneously, and become like the chaff of the summer threshing-floors, so that no place shall be found for them (Daniel 2:35; Daniel 2:44). Then the world-empire, delegated by God to Nebuchadnezzar and other world-rulers for a time, but abused by them to subserve their own ambition and lust, instead of being held as a sacred trust for the glory of the King of kings, shall be wrested from them by the Divine Son of man, the Lord of lords, who will exercise it forever in righteousness for the glory of God and the good of man, and shall so restore to man his long-lost inheritance (Daniel 2:37-38; Daniel 2:44; Psalms 8:4-6).
(13) The effect of Daniel's interpretation on Nebuchadnezzar was, "he fell upon his face" before the servant of God. He who was accustomed to kings falling on their face before him, prostrates himself abjectly before his captive-a striking earnest of the future prostration of the world-powers before Messiah and His saints in the coming kingdom (1 Corinthians 6:2; Philippians 2:10; Luke 19:17). Then shall there be no King of kings acknowledged except Messiah, "the God of gods, and the Lord of kings" (Daniel 2:47; Revelation 17:14). Meanwhile, let us who bear His name, so honour Him in our whole tempers, words, and lives, that the men of the world, falling down on their face, may worship, not us, but God, and report that God is in us of a truth (1 Corinthians 14:25).
(14) Daniel was promoted to high honours and a commanding position in Babylon; and the first use which he made of his influence with the king was to secure the advancement of his three godly friends, How unlike the spirit of the worldly, who, when elevated, soon forget the friends of their humbler days! It was graciously ordered by God that the captivity of the Jews should be much mitigated through the powerful influence of their friends at court, Daniel and his three companions. Thus, God can send alleviations of the sufferings of His people, and raise up friends to them in the worst of times. May we, therefore, wait patiently, and trust in Him at all times, looking for the coming kingdom of Christ as our eternal portion!