All Tyrants Topple. All Empires Erode

Daniel 2:35

Amichai Lau-Lavie (he/him)

Apr 13, 2025

When the king dreams, the country listens. And when the dream interpreter gets it right - the king listens too. In the biblical context dreams are not the stuff of fluff but rather often gateways into policy change that impacts empires and civilizations. Walter Brueggemann wrote that:

“Dreams in the Bible are profoundly political. They disrupt imperial imagination, give voice to the marginalized, and enable subversive futures. Pharaoh dreams, but it is the Hebrew slave who interprets—and governs.”

Chapter two in the Book of Daniel will be the first of several that focus on the language of dreams but there’s another linguistic innovation that happens here - as soon as the narrator tells us that the king’s dream defies clear interpretation and introduces the chorus of court sages who speak Aramaic which is the language of the empire -- the biblical text turns to Aramaic too. This language will be used through the rest of the Book of Daniel.

Although some Aramaic words are already found in the Hebrew Bible - this is new territory, and the only book in the bible to be largely in a foreign language, even if related to Hebrew and written with the same alphabet. It is another reason for scholars to date the composition of text to the 2nd century BCE, when Hebrew was no longer spoken by the masses.

This chapter follows Daniel’s career as royal dream interpreter.

King Nebuchadnezzar wakes up with a bad dream he can’t quite remember and knows he needs to interpret. The entire crew of advisors and magicians are summoned by him and threatened with death unless they come up with solutions. But they don’t - and are all thrown into prison with a death sentence looming. Daniel and his three Judean friends are among them.

Daniel has a plan, inspired by God’s gift of inspiration, and he somehow gets the king’s ear and succeeds in delivering both dream and message to the grateful king whose rage subsides Death threat is over, as Daniel receives honors and promotion, making sure his three Judean buddies are also taken care of.

The content of the dream and its solution has intrigued readers for centuries. On the one hand it is about a specific king’s rise and fall, but from the mystical and political levels - this is a dream that has consequences for all time. Why else would it be recorded in the Bible?

The king dreams of a huge statue, head made of gold, torso of silver, thighs of bronze, legs of iron and feet mixed with clay. And then:

בֵּאדַיִן דָּקוּ כַחֲדָה פַּרְזְלָא חַסְפָּא נְחָשָׁא כַּסְפָּא וְדַהֲבָא וַהֲווֹ כְּעוּר מִן־אִדְּרֵי־קַיִט וּנְשָׂא הִמּוֹן רוּחָא וְכׇל־אֲתַר לָא־הִשְׁתְּכַח לְהוֹן וְאַבְנָא דִּי־מְחָת לְצַלְמָא הֲוָת לְטוּר רַב וּמְלָאת כׇּל־אַרְעָא׃

All at once, the iron, clay, bronze, silver, and gold were crushed, and became like chaff of the threshing floors of summer; a wind carried them off until no trace of them was left. But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.

Daniel 2:35

Daniel’s interpretation was that four kingdoms will come after Babylon, each one represented by one of the metals, and yet the fifth one, like the simple stone that was used by David to slay Goliath, will topple them all.

For many readers over time, this was the stuff of messianic secrets, going beyond Babylon and the empires that followed it to give us hints for the future redemption.

One famous rabbi dedicated an entire book to this story, and brought in his friend, a famous artist, to illustrate it - and caused quite a scandal.

In 1655, Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel of Amsterdam published 'Piedra Gloriosa' - ‘The Glorious Stone’ or ‘On the Statue of Nebuchadnezzar,’ referring to the stone from the dream in this chapter.

The book included four illustrations from his close friend Rembrandt, already quite famous, but his illustrations included what may have been a depiction of God - which were much too for some of the pious leaders of the local Jewish community. The rabbi had to publish another version of the book with more tame art.

But the book’s main idea was to promote hope beyond history. He argues that Jewish exile is temporary, and the downfall of oppressive empires is inevitable. The “stone” is symbolic of divine truth and justice that will ultimately prevail:

“That stone which smote the image and became a great mountain is nothing but the kingdom of the Messiah… which shall destroy all the kingdoms of the world and shall endure forever…in the very manner that the Persians destroyed the Babylonians, and conquered their lands; the Greeks, those of the Persians; the Romans, those of the Greeks…thus the messiah and the people of Israel, shall be the lords of the world with temporal, terrestrial and eternal dominion, according to this infallible interpretation of Daniel.”

Kings come and go, empires topple. But hope remains constant. For generations of readers, Daniels’ words offered hope for better days under tyrannies and harsh conditions.

Reading Daniel as the holiday of Passover begins, and during days of ongoing war and a growing global crisis of authoritarianism, we are reminded of the arc of history and the eventual crumbling of empire and pharaohs, kings and leaders - gone like a bad dream. And in the meanwhile -- phrases like ‘Next Year in Jerusalem’ that was inserted into the ending of the Passover Seder keep reminding us, like Daniel’s dreams and its many interpretations, that hope is a muscle and it’s on us to dream big while we keep believing in and working for much better futures. That’s how we talk back to the rulers and dictators who try to impose their vision on humanity’s dreams. Daniel’s truth-telling courage will be needed as his life in the Babylonian court will continue, with challenging conditions and many more dreams. Dream on.

Image: Rembrandt's Illustration of the King's Dream, 1655

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Below the Bible Belt

All Tyrants Topple. All Empires Erode

Daniel 2:35

When the king dreams, the country listens. And when the dream interpreter gets it right - the king listens too. In the biblical context dreams are not the stuff of fluff but rather often gateways into policy change that impacts empires and civilizations. Walter Brueggemann wrote that:

“Dreams in the Bible are profoundly political. They disrupt imperial imagination, give voice to the marginalized, and enable subversive futures. Pharaoh dreams, but it is the Hebrew slave who interprets—and governs.”

This chapter follows Daniel’s career as royal dream interpreter.

The content of the dream and its solution has intrigued readers for centuries. On the one hand it is about a specific king’s rise and fall, but from the mystical and political levels - this is a dream that has consequences for all time. Why else would it be recorded in the Bible?

The king dreams of a huge statue, head made of gold, torso of silver, thighs of bronze, legs of iron and feet mixed with clay. And then:

All at once, the iron, clay, bronze, silver, and gold were crushed, and became like chaff of the threshing floors of summer; a wind carried them off until no trace of them was left. But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.

Daniel 2:35

Daniel’s interpretation was that four kingdoms will come after Babylon, each one represented by one of the metals, and yet the fifth one, like the simple stone that was used by David to slay Goliath, will topple them all.

For many readers over time, this was the stuff of messianic secrets, going beyond Babylon and the empires that followed it to give us hints for the future redemption.

One famous rabbi dedicated an entire book to this story, and brought in his friend, a famous artist, to illustrate it - and caused quite a scandal.

In 1655, Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel of Amsterdam published 'Piedra Gloriosa' - ‘The Glorious Stone’ or ‘On the Statue of Nebuchadnezzar,’ referring to the stone from the dream in this chapter.

But the book’s main idea was to promote hope beyond history. He argues that Jewish exile is temporary, and the downfall of oppressive empires is inevitable. The “stone” is symbolic of divine truth and justice that will ultimately prevail:

Kings come and go, empires topple. But hope remains constant. For generations of readers, Daniels’ words offered hope for better days under tyrannies and harsh conditions.

Image: Rembrandt's Illustration of the King's Dream, 1655

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