All Jewish writers seem to have clearly realized that “truth in closest words shall fail, when truth embodied in a tale shall enter in at lowly doors.” They convey their ideas to the reader's mind by concrete illustration rather than in the categories of abstract thought. In the stories of Daniel the doctrine is everything. To make the story the first consideration, and the doctrine it was intended to convey an after-thought, as we, with our dry Western literalness are predisposed to do, is to reverse the Jewish order of thinking, and to inflict unconscious injustice on the authors of many edifying narratives of antiquity.
1. The character of Nebuchadnezzar was not known to the writer of Daniel as he has been revealed to us by the monuments. Far from setting up an image of himself in gold and commanding everybody to fall down and worship it, he was, judged by the standard of his age and country, pre-eminently a religious king. As Professor Hommel says, “In his inscriptions we see on the one hand the fatherly care of a prince zealously considerate for the welfare of his land, on the other a genuine and heart-felt piety, which does not at all produce the impression of consisting simply of empty phrases.” His longer inscriptions invariably begin with an acknowledgment of what he owes to Marduk and Nebo, and end with a prayer for further blessings.
He is known chiefly as a builder, and in the famous “India House Inscription” he tells how he renovated two great temples and built many others, while of one of his splendid palaces he says, “That house, for admiration I made it, for the beholding of the hosts of men I filled it with magnificence. Awe-inspiring glory, and dread of the splendour of my sovereignty, encompass it round about; the evil, unrighteous man cometh not within it.” And he ends with a prayer to Marduk, his “lord,” beseeching him, as he loves and has adorned his abode, to grant him long and prosperous life in the palace which he has built, and to permit his descendants to rule in it for ever.
2. But when the writer of Daniel depicted the great king of Babylon, he had in his mind the king who was so well known to him and all his countrymen-Antiochus Epiphanes, the Manifest (god, a title which his subjects changed into Antiochus Epimanes, the Mad. This king undoubtedly deified himself. This is particularly evident on his coins. His best portraits appear to be those on the coins of his early years, which bear simply the inscription “King Antiochus.” At a later period of his reign a star appears on his forehead, implying that he has assumed divine honours. Then in coins with the legend, “King Antiochus, God” (or “God Manifest” [Epiphanes]), the star disappears, but the portrait is idealized, the features approximating in type to those of Apollo. Other coins of the same type exhibit the head surrounded by a diadem with rays-another mark of divine rank. Lastly, on coins with the legend “King Antiochus, God Manifest, Victory-bearer,” the head approximates even to that of Zeus Olympios, whose distinctive epithet “Victory-bearer” the king himself assumes. His sin was arrogant and impious self-confidence-that hubris which the Greeks regarded as a high offence against heaven, and which was always overtaken sooner or later by some dire Nemesis; that pride which, according to the Hebrew sages, goes before destruction, that haughty spirit which is sure to end in a fall.
Pride seeks to lower others, because it seeks to raise self. The wish to exalt self leads to the wish to see one's neighbour humbled. The presence of pride discloses itself in subtle and unexpected ways. Why do we take pleasure in our neighbour's misfortunes? Is not the strange sensation of satisfaction which we feel the pulse of our unsubdued pride? This uncanny but pleasing thrill is the wicked chuckle of our pride. On this platform stands La Rochefoucauld's cynical saying: “We have all enough patience to bear our neighbour's misfortunes.” “Pride,” as Thomas Aquinas writes, “is said to be the love of our own excellence, in so far that out of love arises an overweening presumption of our right to overtop others, which fitly belongs to pride.”1 [Note: W. Boyd Carpenter, The Spiritual Message of Dante, 151.]
3. The story of the stricken despot of mighty Babylon is illustrated again and again by what the late Bishop Thirlwall called the “irony of history”-the very cases in which men seem to have been elevated to the very summit of power only to heighten the dreadful precipice over which they immediately fall. He mentions the cases of Persia, which was on the verge of ruin when with lordly arrogance she dictated the Peace of Antalcidas; of Boniface viii., in the Jubilee of 1300, immediately preceding his deadly overthrow; of Spain, under Philip ii., struck down by the ruin of the Armada at the zenith of her wealth and pride. He might have added the instances of Ahab, Sennacherib, Nebuchadnezzar, and Herod Antipas; of Alexander the Great, dying as the fool dieth, drunken and miserable, in the supreme hour of his conquests; of Napoleon, hurled into the dust, first by the retreat from Moscow, then by the overthrow at Waterloo. But the writer of Daniel, having a great soul, and bearing no malice even to a proud despot, makes his demented and fallen monarch come to himself again, repent of his sins, and bless and praise the King of Heaven who is able to abase those that walk in pride.
Longfellow tells how King Robert of Sicily, hearing the words chanted, “He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree,” muttered scornfully,
'Tis well that such seditious words are sung
Only by priests and in the Latin tongue;
For unto priests and people be it known,
There is no power can push me from my throne!
As a punishment he was made to feel that the world he loved so much had turned to dust and ashes. Three years of abject poverty taught him the lesson of humility, and with both hands crossed upon his breast he meekly said:
My sins as scarlet are; let me go hence,
And in some cloister's school of penitence,
Across those stones, that pave the way to heaven,
Walk barefoot, till my guilty soul be shriven.
And then, restored to royal power and glory, he learned for the first time the meaning of the words, “He hath exalted them of low degree.”
Nebuchadnezzar never, that I have read of, got one single lesson from God or man that he did not instantly lay it to heart. As I read of Nebuchadnezzar's humility, and makeableness, and teachableness in Daniel's hands I am amazed at the boldness of the young Belteshazzar, and still more at the behaviour of his mighty master. When I put myself into Nebuchadnezzar's place, when I recall my own temper and my own conduct, I honour Nebuchadnezzar, and I cannot cease from wondering that the king of Babylon has not been far more made of as a pattern of humility and meekness both under the dispensations of God and under the doctrines of Dan_1:1-21 [Note: A. Whyte.]
