Much of prophecy is disjointed in its presentation, and rather non-linnear. This makes those parts of prophecy that present a linear story all the more important. These passages are tests of their expositors: is our exposition a full reflection of what the prophecy describes? In my experience they are not. The expositor is too busy fitting elements of the passage to his already-existing framework to first stop and really pull out everything the passage describes. Daniel 2 is perfect example of this. It is the simplest of the few linear prophetic passages, but I have yet to see an exposition that examines it with total honesty. This is a serious failure.
The whole dream is of a single man, and verses 31-35 present a quick description: a golden head, silver chest, bronze waist and thighs, iron legs, and feet of iron mixed with clay. Finally, verses 34-35 describe the advent of a sixth kingdom, for a stone cut by no human hands (heavenly) smashes the entire man, and this stone becomes a great mountain (kingdom) filling the world. Verse 44 informs that the mountain is an eternal kingdom.
Together, these assertions cause us to recognize in Nebuchadnezzar's vision a retelling of the second and third parts of Moses' threefold history (Deuteronomy 28-30, 4), namely Israel's curse (of subjection) and final reconciliation to God. Daniel, however, has provided more information than Moses, for he breaks the curse into a sequence of five powers, of which Babylon is the first. We may wonder why Daniel's vision has omitted the first part of Moses' threefold history (the blessing); the reason is simple: the blessing has passed, and Babylon's conquest of Judah marks the beginning of the curse.
Daniel's actual interpretation begins in verses 36-40 with a quick reiteration of the first four powers, and these verses explicitly state these powers to be a sequence in which each is replaced by the subsequent one. This constraint is significant because it prevents the interpreter from escaping into the happy vagueness of arbitrarily assigning nations as convenience (or inclination) dictates.
If the nations are a sequence, it remains to discover in what sense each succeeds another. The only workable answer is found in their possession of Jerusalem (and the land); this assertion stands on two grounds: first, Daniel is describing the curse (and its end), and in embodying the curse as a whole man he is emphasizing that they are notional unity from the perspective of the prophetic story. Thus, although the iron legs will arrive (as a power) long after Babylon has fallen, it is still a part of a unity, and this unity is Israel's curse its subjection, national destruction, and long dispossession of the land of Israel.
The second argument is that without the connecting thread of Jerusalem's conquest to constrain the meaning of the sequence, it is not predictive of anything it is not prophetic at all. A simple example may illustrate: to say that five strangers shall knock on my door before midnight is prophetic. But to say five strangers shall knock on doors is not; there are many strangers in the world and there are many doors, and when we remove the prediction's constraints it ceases to be predictive in any meaningful sense. Obviously, the Messianic kingdom must arrive sometime after Babylon, and obviously it must supplant whatever came before it. If this is all the prophecy indicates, the middle three kingdoms become functionally meaningless. But they cannot be meaningless not if prophecy originates in God; therefore we must take the implied constraint seriously, and the only constraint provided by prophecy is conquest of the land.
Verse 40 provides a critical piece of information: the statue's metals are used for their strength, not their cost, for it says that the fourth power will be strong as iron, because iron breaks to pieces and shatters all things. Thus, in the movement from gold to silver to bronze to iron we should look for an increase in the power's duration. Babylon was a great empire that grew by smashing its rivals, but it is nevertheless depicted as gold it was soft. And this was true, for its greatness was brief, a mere seventy years. In short, Babylon was not a lasting power.
Verses 41-43 contain a description of the fifth power, the feet of mixed iron and clay. Here, Daniel is actually presenting two attributes. First, the iron indicates that it is lasting and resilient, on a similar scale of time as the fourth power (the iron legs). The second attribute is its clay; that is, it has difficulty in cohering, in keeping its political center. Verse 43 makes this quite explicit: the iron of the feet will mix and marry, but they will not hold together. Its iron components, however, still remain.
We now possess a simple and somewhat cartoonish picture of the curse, but which also contains suggestive details: five powers (starting with Babylon), the first four of increasing duration, with the fifth of similar duration to the fourth, but lacking its coherence. Additionally, these are to be successive possessors of Jerusalem over the time of the curse. Having this information, a historical solution can be attempted: the sequence of powers is Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, Islam. These five neatly fulfill all the requirements of the prophecy. First, they are the five great powers to possess Jerusalem for any significant time over the last 2600 years (the curse). Second, up through the Roman power, each power holds Jerusalem for a longer time than the preceding, matching the increasing hardness of the statue's metals. Note that the legs' iron presents an accurate description of Rome's unmatched military competence. Thirdly, while Islam has had a long duration, its possession of Jerusalem was, in fact, a succession of six different Islamic powers: the Rashidun Caliphate, the Umayyad Caliphate, the Abbasid Caliphate, the Fatimid Caliphate, the Mamaluke Sultanate, and the Ottomans. While each of these were distinct Muslim powers (ruling Jerusalem from different capitals), they also claimed (or possessed de facto) headship of the Muslim caliphate (the Muslim polity). In fact, Islam's history as a succession of 6 powers to control Jerusalem, ending with the apparent total collapse of Islamic power at the end of the Ottoman empire, is so suggestive that the prophetic exposition of the rest of Daniel and Revelation practically writes itself.
Thus, these successive Muslim powers have absorbed new peoples, changed capitals, and fought amongst themselves, and despite this nothing has altered Islam's essential tendency to persist and grow even as it fractures and then reassembles into a new political unity. Even now in its currently divided state, the longing for a new political unity can be heard in the utterances of its devout; and even as they long for the wholeness of the ummah, they prepare to subvert and attack each other to make their own capital its head. In Islam's tendency to fracture and reform without losing its basic vitality is the fulfillment of the fifth power's clay. It is a persistent but fractious and malleable unity: it is iron and clay.
Additionally, this assignment of the final human kingdom to Islam, finds powerful support in Daniel 7 and 11. Daniel 11:36-39 describes it as an essentially religious power, asserting 5 characteristics that identify it as Islam:
Finally, in verses 44-45 Daniel states that after this last power (Islam), God will establish an unconquerable kingdom which shall overcome everything around it.
Daniel chapter 2 is a vision of clean lines and bright colors. It has both simplicity and breadth, and fits neatly into Moses' threefold prophetic scheme. Additionally, Daniel's vision has sufficient detail to make a preliminary match against actual recorded history, and the historical picture fits the prophetic one improbably well.
There is no doubt that this exposition discombobulates much current thought on prophecy. However, this is good, because this is actually a more rational and detailed reading of 2, getting rid of another "gap" interpretation (a gap which is not found in his description -- there is no air between the iron legs and feet), and it actually pays attention to the character of the feet. And aside from being more rational in itself, it causes the rest of Daniel and Revelation to become more rational -- and to fit history with a ludicrous level of accuracy.
This entire content this exposition of Daniel 2 paraphrases the book "Primary Prophecy".
The whole dream is of a single man, and verses 31-35 present a quick description: a golden head, silver chest, bronze waist and thighs, iron legs, and feet of iron mixed with clay. Finally, verses 34-35 describe the advent of a sixth kingdom, for a stone cut by no human hands (heavenly) smashes the entire man, and this stone becomes a great mountain (kingdom) filling the world. Verse 44 informs that the mountain is an eternal kingdom.
Together, these assertions cause us to recognize in Nebuchadnezzar's vision a retelling of the second and third parts of Moses' threefold history (Deuteronomy 28-30, 4), namely Israel's curse (of subjection) and final reconciliation to God. Daniel, however, has provided more information than Moses, for he breaks the curse into a sequence of five powers, of which Babylon is the first. We may wonder why Daniel's vision has omitted the first part of Moses' threefold history (the blessing); the reason is simple: the blessing has passed, and Babylon's conquest of Judah marks the beginning of the curse.
Daniel's actual interpretation begins in verses 36-40 with a quick reiteration of the first four powers, and these verses explicitly state these powers to be a sequence in which each is replaced by the subsequent one. This constraint is significant because it prevents the interpreter from escaping into the happy vagueness of arbitrarily assigning nations as convenience (or inclination) dictates.
If the nations are a sequence, it remains to discover in what sense each succeeds another. The only workable answer is found in their possession of Jerusalem (and the land); this assertion stands on two grounds: first, Daniel is describing the curse (and its end), and in embodying the curse as a whole man he is emphasizing that they are notional unity from the perspective of the prophetic story. Thus, although the iron legs will arrive (as a power) long after Babylon has fallen, it is still a part of a unity, and this unity is Israel's curse its subjection, national destruction, and long dispossession of the land of Israel.
The second argument is that without the connecting thread of Jerusalem's conquest to constrain the meaning of the sequence, it is not predictive of anything it is not prophetic at all. A simple example may illustrate: to say that five strangers shall knock on my door before midnight is prophetic. But to say five strangers shall knock on doors is not; there are many strangers in the world and there are many doors, and when we remove the prediction's constraints it ceases to be predictive in any meaningful sense. Obviously, the Messianic kingdom must arrive sometime after Babylon, and obviously it must supplant whatever came before it. If this is all the prophecy indicates, the middle three kingdoms become functionally meaningless. But they cannot be meaningless not if prophecy originates in God; therefore we must take the implied constraint seriously, and the only constraint provided by prophecy is conquest of the land.
Verse 40 provides a critical piece of information: the statue's metals are used for their strength, not their cost, for it says that the fourth power will be strong as iron, because iron breaks to pieces and shatters all things. Thus, in the movement from gold to silver to bronze to iron we should look for an increase in the power's duration. Babylon was a great empire that grew by smashing its rivals, but it is nevertheless depicted as gold it was soft. And this was true, for its greatness was brief, a mere seventy years. In short, Babylon was not a lasting power.
Verses 41-43 contain a description of the fifth power, the feet of mixed iron and clay. Here, Daniel is actually presenting two attributes. First, the iron indicates that it is lasting and resilient, on a similar scale of time as the fourth power (the iron legs). The second attribute is its clay; that is, it has difficulty in cohering, in keeping its political center. Verse 43 makes this quite explicit: the iron of the feet will mix and marry, but they will not hold together. Its iron components, however, still remain.
We now possess a simple and somewhat cartoonish picture of the curse, but which also contains suggestive details: five powers (starting with Babylon), the first four of increasing duration, with the fifth of similar duration to the fourth, but lacking its coherence. Additionally, these are to be successive possessors of Jerusalem over the time of the curse. Having this information, a historical solution can be attempted: the sequence of powers is Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, Islam. These five neatly fulfill all the requirements of the prophecy. First, they are the five great powers to possess Jerusalem for any significant time over the last 2600 years (the curse). Second, up through the Roman power, each power holds Jerusalem for a longer time than the preceding, matching the increasing hardness of the statue's metals. Note that the legs' iron presents an accurate description of Rome's unmatched military competence. Thirdly, while Islam has had a long duration, its possession of Jerusalem was, in fact, a succession of six different Islamic powers: the Rashidun Caliphate, the Umayyad Caliphate, the Abbasid Caliphate, the Fatimid Caliphate, the Mamaluke Sultanate, and the Ottomans. While each of these were distinct Muslim powers (ruling Jerusalem from different capitals), they also claimed (or possessed de facto) headship of the Muslim caliphate (the Muslim polity). In fact, Islam's history as a succession of 6 powers to control Jerusalem, ending with the apparent total collapse of Islamic power at the end of the Ottoman empire, is so suggestive that the prophetic exposition of the rest of Daniel and Revelation practically writes itself.
Thus, these successive Muslim powers have absorbed new peoples, changed capitals, and fought amongst themselves, and despite this nothing has altered Islam's essential tendency to persist and grow even as it fractures and then reassembles into a new political unity. Even now in its currently divided state, the longing for a new political unity can be heard in the utterances of its devout; and even as they long for the wholeness of the ummah, they prepare to subvert and attack each other to make their own capital its head. In Islam's tendency to fracture and reform without losing its basic vitality is the fulfillment of the fifth power's clay. It is a persistent but fractious and malleable unity: it is iron and clay.
Additionally, this assignment of the final human kingdom to Islam, finds powerful support in Daniel 7 and 11. Daniel 11:36-39 describes it as an essentially religious power, asserting 5 characteristics that identify it as Islam:
- It is a new religion, having supplanted traditional tribal polytheistic beliefs.
- It claims sole legitimacy of religion. This is an important prediction because Daniel recorded it at a time when the entire world (except Israel) was polytheistic or pantheistic.
- It is a religion whose God commands war another astonishing prediction. Many ancient religions had a god of war (just as they had a god of peace, love, harvest, and storms, etc), but war as a primary religious principle is quite singular, and not to be found in any of the other empires holding Jerusalem. In fact, of all major religions this is true of Islam alone.
- It follows no other gods; this boils down to an assertion of monotheism. Probably the most astonishing prediction, for at the time of the prophecy, Judaism was the only monotheistic religion.
- It shall rule over many and shall conquer the strongest fortresses. Together these statements tell us it shall rule many nations or peoples though this was already implied in its early conquests and verse 36's assertion of general success. The statement that it shall honor those who acknowledge him hints that it will be more than one nation; that is, its religious influence may grow beyond its native region.
Finally, in verses 44-45 Daniel states that after this last power (Islam), God will establish an unconquerable kingdom which shall overcome everything around it.
Daniel chapter 2 is a vision of clean lines and bright colors. It has both simplicity and breadth, and fits neatly into Moses' threefold prophetic scheme. Additionally, Daniel's vision has sufficient detail to make a preliminary match against actual recorded history, and the historical picture fits the prophetic one improbably well.
There is no doubt that this exposition discombobulates much current thought on prophecy. However, this is good, because this is actually a more rational and detailed reading of 2, getting rid of another "gap" interpretation (a gap which is not found in his description -- there is no air between the iron legs and feet), and it actually pays attention to the character of the feet. And aside from being more rational in itself, it causes the rest of Daniel and Revelation to become more rational -- and to fit history with a ludicrous level of accuracy.
This entire content this exposition of Daniel 2 paraphrases the book "Primary Prophecy".