Nebuchadnezzar and the Trinity: Part One

God led King Nebuchadnezzar through a threefold process in his journey of faith. If we look closely, we can see ways in which this is trinitarian. But first, here is an overview of the events:

Daniel 2: A dream about a statue made of empires

Daniel 3: An image of gold and a fiery furnace

Daniel 4: A tree and seven years of beastiness

The Lord takes Nebuchadnezzar from being a pagan believing in many disinterested gods to proclaiming that the Most High rules in the kingdoms of men. However, there are stopping points along the way. With each step, he moves closer to Nebuchadnezzar’s heart. Finally, this converted emperor becomes the only non-Hebrew (besides perhaps Job and Luke) to pen a chapter of the Bible.

If my thesis about the trinitarian structure of the three chapters on Nebuchadnezzar is true, then there are certainly other patterns which can be mapped onto it. Here are a few which I have chosen to take a closer look at in these posts:

Who is representing God in each story? Which “person” of the Trinity is the king symbolically interacting with?

What is being idolized? What counterfeit is eclipsing the light from shining, or communion with God?

Where does each step take Nebuchadnezzar in his faith? Where does his theology land?

Because all three episodes have to do with images, there will be a bonus fourth post where I will use one of my favorite trinitarian templates to discuss Nebuchadnezzar’s story: the progression of the image of God from physical to social to ethical.

Here is a chart with a map of where we will go as we look at this:

Neb’s Story	God	Who	What	Where	Image of God	Chapter
Part 1	Father	Daniel	Dream	Belief in the God of Heaven	Physical	Daniel 2
Part 2	Son	Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego	Golden Image	Belief in the Angel of God	Social	Daniel 3
Part 3	Holy Spirit	Nebuchadnezzar & Daniel	Self	Belief in the Most High	Ethical	Daniel 4

Daniel 2: Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream

Who

After Nebuchadnezzar has his dream, he commands his wise men to interpret it for him. When they ask him what the dream was, he goes a step further and demands they tell him what his dream was to prove they really are practicing divination. No one can do it except for Daniel, who has prayed that God would show him the dream.

By being the only one among many wise men to know the dream, Daniel is like God among many gods. His wisdom is clearly from above; five times in the chapter God is referred to as “the God of Heaven” (verses 18, 19, 28, 36, 44). The wise men have said “It is a difficult thing that the king requests, and there is no other who can tell it to the king except the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh.” But Daniel explains that the God of Heaven can reveal secrets to men.

This corresponds to God the Father because when speaking of the God of Heaven, God as creator comes to mind, the first person of the Trinity. This is in contrast to the Lord of the Earth, which has more Christological implications, or the Holy Spirit, who hovers over the face of the waters. “Our Father in Heaven…” The Father of Jesus Christ, the God of Heaven, is who showed Daniel the king’s dream.

Two Trinitarian packages which fall under the “who” category are those of human relationships and of office.

Human Relationships: Father, Brother, Friend

Office: Priest, King, Prophet

In this first of three Nebuchadnezzar episodes, Daniel, who is God’s representative, serves as father and as priest. He is a father because, like a father teaching his child, he shares God’s secrets with Nebuchadnezzar. For Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel is like Joseph, who was “made to be a father to Pharaoh” (Genesis 45:8). He is the one the king tells his scary dreams to.

But how is Daniel a priest in Chapter 2? One way is that in a sense he offers himself up as a sacrifice on behalf of the other wise men. The king has promised to kill all the wise men who cannot tell him his dream, an impossible task for “flesh” to do. The specific language used to describe the king’s threat is sacrificial. He says he will cut them in pieces and their houses shall be made heaps of ash. Sacrifices are chopped up and burned. The wise men would be flesh on the altar under knife and fire. But in verse 24 Daniel tells the captain: “Do not destroy the wise men of Babylon; take me before the king, and I will tell the king the interpretation.” Daniel stuck his neck out so that the killing, which had already begun, would end.

What

In light of this theory and in contrast to the other chapters, in Daniel 2 Daniel serves as father and priest. But what is the thing that he is dealing with? What is the blockage, the crisis, the enemy? I want to suggest that the primary idol in this chapter which stands against God the Father is the uninterpreted dream itself, more specifically the image in the dream. It is a false god because, with no interpretation, it it is a false temple demanding false sacrifices.

The image in the dream is a statue made of gold, silver, bronze, iron, and clay which is destroyed by a stone which turns into a mountain. Daniel interprets the dream as signifying four empires, all of which are replaced by a new, everlasting kingdom. In his lecture series on Daniel, James Jordan explains that this was not primarily a warning against humanism—the building an empire in rebellion to God. That was not what was happening. He explains that in the post-kingdom age of Israel, these empires were now the house of God’s people. Israel’s world had been greatly expanded and the kings of these empires were now their kings, anointed by God like the kings of Israel before the exile. This image in the dream, which was made of the same materials as the tabernacle and Solomon’s temple, was now the new temple of Israel. God now dwelt in the empires.

According to this interpretation, there is nothing evil about the image in the dream. Even though it is eventually destroyed, like the tabernacle and temple, while it stands it is performing God’s purposes. But without this knowledge (the interpretation of what it meant) the image haunted Nebuchadnezzar and it became his obsession, robbing from him rest and peace (verse 1). Without knowing it was the Lord’s temple, it became a false temple. It had been built, but it was an “empty” temple, void of the fiery glory of interpretation which God eventually provided through Daniel.

The other part of the dream was the stone which destroyed the temple before growing into a mountain. This was of course the Kingdom of Heaven, the everlasting kingdom. Jordan explaines that the mountain it turned into was also a temple, a pyramid, because in the ancient world pyramids were modeled to be miniature mountains ascending to Heaven. They were also altars, places for sacrifice.

The proof that the dream had become an obsession, an idol, for Nebuchadnezzar was that he started sacrificing people on it. As mentioned, he was rendering lamb for the slaughter any wise man who could not tell him what his precious dream was, who could not answer “what is in my pocket?” The idol led to extreme abuse of power. Prophets should be executed for lying, but he was taking it to a perverted level by killing them for not even knowing the dream. In his torment he was tormenting others—this is the dark stuff of idolatry. And his idol was the mysterious dream he had seen.

Where

The demise of the idol dream was that it could be interpreted. In telling the king what every feature of the dream symbolized, God, through Daniel, was taking dominion over the image. When you can name your idol you now have power over it. Nebuchadnezzar, tormented by an unknown future, now can see into it four empires deep and beyond.

After the dream had been interpreted, “King Nebuchadnezzar fell on his face, prostrate before Daniel, and commanded that they should present an offering and incense to him.” Rather than making bloody sacrifices of his wise men to his gods, the king is now making an incense offering (a prayer offering) to the God of Heaven through Daniel.

Then the king makes his confession: “Truly your God is the God of gods, the Lord of kings, and a Revealer of secrets, since you could reveal this secret” (verse 47).

The testimony itself is Trinitarian. But let me suggest that in contrast to the confessions made in the next two chapters, there is a Father flavor here because it is about revealing secrets which are from the highest place, the dream world, the heavenly realm. In contrast to modern psychology, the perspective is not that the king’s dream came from a subconscious abyss (though I don’t think that perspective is untrue. But the king’s id will be examined more directly in Part Three). This dream came from beyond the stars, from the highest place, and Daniel’s God can reveal it not because of how low into the king’s mind he can stoop, but because of how high his throne is, higher than all the other gods. Nebuchadnezzar was in the dark over his nightmare, but the God who reveals secrets can do so because to him night shines as the day. He is the father of lights (James 1:17).