Nebuchadnezzar's Fall (part 4)

According to the Scriptural narrative, as the first divine image-bearer, Adam had been given complete dominion over the covenant God’s good creation.  Through his actions however, as creation’s representative before its God---the creation’s king and ruler as it were---that creation had become marred.  In what amounted to bringing himself honor through self-worship, in full knowledge of his desire to be like his Creator God with whom he was said to have regular and direct fellowship (presumably that he might best know how to be the divine image bearer in and for the creation), Adam fell from the position of authority into which he had been placed. 

Due to this, Adam was told “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.  By the sweat of your brow you will eat food until you return to the ground” (3:17b-19a).  So the creation itself was unable to escape the judgment that came to its representative.  How is this reflected in the Nebuchadnezzar story?  In much the same way that Adam had been driven from the garden of Eden, because of the king’s self-worship, when he was stripped of his rule and authority, the Creator God said to him, “You will be driven from human society” (Daniel 4:32a).  Adam had given up his full humanity, which is a fate that would come to Nebuchadnezzar as well. 

Yes, it must be understood that, in his fall, Adam gave up and rejected what it meant to be fully human.  Adam, having been made as the image of the Creator God for the world---designed to trust and honor and worship his Creator, lost that which the Creator God had apparently intended for humankind.  This realization makes Nebuchadnezzar’s plight of being “driven from human society” all the more fascinating. 

To this fact of being driven from human society, the God of Israel added that Nebuchadnezzar would “live with the wild animals” (4:32b).  With his dominion over creation taken from him, in which he was clearly placed by the Creator God (much like Nebuchadnezzar had been given power and a kingdom by that same God for a particular purpose and time) in a stewarding, care-taking, responsible, and God-like superiority over the beasts of the field (how would the Creator of all things treat His creation?), Adam’s expulsion from the garden now meant that he too was going to live with the wild animals. 

Why?  Why is there this parallel in the stories of Adam and Nebuchadnezzar?  It is because, quite frankly, humans become what they worship.  Adam, as Scripture seems to indicate, turned his thoughts upon himself, essentially worshiping the creature.  Nebuchadnezzar, in many respects, did the same.  With that being so, the Creator God drove both of them to join the realm over which they had previously ruled, and to live like the remainder of the created order---to live like that which they had now come to worship.  By over-reaching, both of them denied the Creator God’s purpose for them.         

Along with being driven from human society and living with wild animals, the covenant God tells Nebuchadnezzar that he “will be fed grass like oxen” (Daniel 4:32c).  As one continues to compare this king’s fall with the fall of the earth’s first ruler (Adam-the divine image-bearer that originally been given sovereignty over the creation), is it possible to find a corollary with this statement in the fall of man?  In a way, yes.