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. The Creator 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 the Creator God’s image-bearing
steward over all creation, and because he had been given a responsible dominion
over the works of his God’s hands, his humble servants would have been the
trees of the garden. Scripture seems to
suggest that creation itself would have willingly yielded its bounty to its
steward. 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, as Adam (man) was now forced to till the ground to yield
food (“eating grass” then serving as metaphor), would serve as a constant
reminder that they had fallen from what had been intended for them. Yes, if He truly holds the world in His
hands, it is to be borne in mind that the Creator God had purposeful intentions
for Nebuchadnezzar.
As has been said, the
respective falls came through pride and self-worship, as both Adam and the king
of Babylon 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 having
been driven from human society. Adam would be forced to 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 to be the bearer of the divine image. He now lived in
cursing and exile, fallen from glory, 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 the image of the covenant God of Israel, and therefore
even further separated from that God, in an awful state of exile and in full
experience of the Creator God’s cursing upon himself.
After this
pronouncement on the man that is so often thought of as an evil and idolatrous
king, the story of Nebuchadnezzar takes what might be perceived as an
unexpected turn. The Creator 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. As the story goes, he was informed
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, the Creator 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 and substance and conviction to his
previous declaration about that 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?
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