Along with being driven from human society and living with wild animals, God tells Nebuchadnezzar that he “will be fed grass like oxen” (Daniel 4:32c). As we continue to compare this king’s fall with the fall of the earth’s first ruler (Adam-the one originally given sovereignty over the creation), do we find a corollary with this statement in the fall of man? In a way, we do. As man is driven from the good and bountiful garden, which had freely yielded the fruit of the trees for his sustenance, he is informed about a different way that his food is going to come to him from that point forward. God told Adam, “cursed is the ground thanks to you; in painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, but you will eat the grain of the field” (Genesis 3:17b-18). This eating of the grain of the field---of what grows from the ground---could be likened to Nebuchadnezzar’s being “fed grass like oxen,” as both are now going to be eating what grows from the ground, as they live among the wild animals, rather than having plenteous quantities of food delivered to them by their humble servants.
Humble servants? In Adam’s case, because he was God’s image-bearing steward over all creation and had been given dominion over the works of God’s hands, his humble servants would have been the trees of the garden. For Nebuchadnezzar, of course, his servants would have been those men and women over which he ruled. This eating of grass, for both Nebuchadnezzar and Adam, would serve as a constant reminder that they had fallen from what had been intended for them. As has been said, the fall came through pride and self-worship, as they both presumptuously reached for that which did not belong to them. Each time they ate the grass of the field, they would be reminded of their being driven from human society. Adam would remember that he had willfully departed from what it meant to be fully human, which was living in a complete, trusting allegiance to his Creator, faithfully carrying out his divine purpose. He now lived in cursing and exile, fallen, and now inhabiting a world cursed because of his faithlessness. Nebuchadnezzar would be separated from fellowship with his fellow human beings, therefore separated from relationship with others that had been created in God’s image, and therefore even further separated from God, in an awful state of exile, in full experience of God’s cursing upon himself.
After this pronouncement on the man that we so often think of as an evil and idolatrous king, the story of Nebuchadnezzar takes what might be perceived as an unexpected turn. God makes a promise to Nebuchadnezzar that this state of affairs, in which he finds himself living a beastly existence, will go on for “seven periods of time” (4:32d). So it was not going to be a permanent condition for Nebuchadnezzar. He was told that he was going to undergo this cursing and exile so that he would be made to “understand that the Most High is ruler over human kingdoms and gives them to whomever He wishes” (4:32e). There is grace and mercy for Nebuchadnezzar here. Not only is his time of insanity going to have a defined limit, but through it, God is going to enter in so as to reveal Himself to this king. He will do this in a way that will, for Nebuchadnezzar, give real meaning to his previous declaration about God, in which he had said, “How great are His signs! How mighty are His wonders! His kingdom will last forever, and His authority continues from one generation to the next” (4:3). In these words, Nebuchadnezzar had told “all peoples, nations, and language groups that live in all the land” (4:1), that he was “delighted to tell you about the signs and wonders that the most high God has done for me” (4:2). Perhaps this was nothing more than lip service, following that to which he had been witness in the situation with Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, and the fourth man in the fiery furnace? Perhaps not?
We have seen and heard something like this from Nebuchadnezzar previously, when, following Daniel’s revelation and interpretation of the king’s dream about the great statue, Nebuchadnezzar responded by saying to Daniel, “Certainly your God is a God of gods and Lord of kings and revealer of mysteries, for you were able to reveal this mystery” (2:47). Nebuchadnezzar’s response to the telling of the prophecy of the statue was to build a statue of himself entirely out of gold, though in the dream, only the head of the statue of himself was gold, while the rest was composed of different materials. Daniel had informed the king that the various materials used from top to bottom represented kingdoms that would rise up and pass away, beginning with his own kingdom of Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar’s response, after speaking highly of Daniel’s God, was to construct the previously referenced image made completely from gold, thus indicating his belief that it was his kingdom that would never pass away. To this, he added the requirement for all peoples to bow down and worship the image, in worship of him and in recognition of what he thought of as his own eternal kingdom. This, of course, precipitated the “fiery furnace incident”, which, in turn, engendered his proclamation at the beginning of the fourth chapter of Daniel. So it seems reasonable that there may have been a bit of disingenuousness in Nebuchadnezzar’s great proclamation, so the God that had been so gloriously referenced took it upon Himself to make Nebuchadnezzar a true believer, with the thoughts of his heart matching the words of his lips.
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