31–45: Portentous dreams of the fate of kingdoms
were common in the ancient world; cf. Herodotus, Histories 1.108, 7.19. Here, however, the author uses an older
prediction of four world kingdoms—understood as Babylonia, Media, Persia, and
Greece—and emphasizes their decreasing value. They are followed by a mixed
kingdom of iron and clay, which signifies the divided Greek
kingdom and the Ptolemaic and Seleucid kings who ruled in the eastern
Mediterranean. Although Daniel predicts the demise of the Babylonian kingdom
and its ultimate replacement by the kingdom
of the God of Heaven, Nebuchadnezzar
nevertheless reveres Daniel for his insight. (The Jewish Study Bible, ed. Adele Berlin, Marc Zvi
Brettler, and Michael Fishbane [New York: Oxford University Press, 2004], 1646)
