Daniel 2:42

Dan 2:42 And [as] the toes of the feet [were] part of iron, and part of clay, [so] the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken.

Ver. 42. So the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken.] Or, Brittle. This we see daily fulfilled in the tottering kingdoms both of that of the Turk (which laboureth with nothing more than the weightiness of itself, and yet hath been soundly battered of late by the Venetians) and the other of the Pope, which declineth also apace, and shall do every day more and more, according to that old distitch:

“ Roma diu titubans, variis erroribus acta,

Corruet, et mundi desinet esse caput. ”

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

[Daniel 2:42] V'etzbeʿat (וְאֶצְבְּעָת - And the toes): These are the princes (sarei - שָׂרֵי) of Ishmael and the kings in the East and in the West.

Ibn Ezra on the Tanakh — English translations: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “Yalkut, Sifsei Chachomim Chumash, Metsudah Publications, 2009” (CC BY 4.0); and “Commentary of Ibn Ezra on Isaiah - trans. by M. Friedlander, 1873” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.

(42) So the kingdom.—This strength, however, is only apparent. There are certain discordant elements in the fourth empire. These are here represented by the iron and clay, which cannot be made to cohere.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

42. so the kingdom, &c.] so part of the kingdom shall be strong, and part of it shall be broken.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

And as the toes of the feet were part of iron and part of clay,.... Or some of them of iron, and so were strong and powerful, as some of these kingdoms were; and some of clay, and so were weak and easily crushed, and did not stand long:

so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken; this is not unfitly interpreted by some of the two fold power which has prevailed in these ten kingdoms, through the policy of the pope of Rome, the secular and ecclesiastic power; the latter often encroaching upon and prevailing over the other, which has tended to the weakening of these states.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

And as the toes of the feet were part of iron and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken - Margin, “brittle.” The margin is the more correct rendering of the Chaldee word (תבירה tebı̂yrâh). It means “frail, fragile” - easily broken, but not necessarily that it was actually broken. That did not occur until the stone cut out of the mountain impinged on it. It has been commonly supposed (comp. Newton “on the Prophecies”), that the ten toes on the feet refer to the ten kingdoms into which the Roman empire was ultimately broken up, corresponding with the ten horns seen in the vision of Daniel, in Dan 7:7. In regard to the fact that the Roman empire was ultimately broken up into ten such kingdoms, see the extended notes at Dan 7:24. The thing which struck the monarch in the vision, and Daniel in the interpretation, as remarkable, was that the feet and toes “were composed partly of iron and partly of clay.”

In the upper portion of the image there had been uniformity in the different parts, and had been no intermingling of metals. Here a new feature was seen - not only that a new metal was employed, but that there was intermingled with that, in the same portion of the image, a different substance, and one that had no affinity with the iron, and that could never be made to blend with it. In the latter part of this verse, the original word for “partly” is not the same in each clause. In the former it is מן־קצת min-qetsâth - properly “from the end,” sc., of the kingdom. Compare Dan 12:13, “At the end of the days;” Dan 1:15, “At the end of ten days;” and Dan 2:5, Dan 2:18. The word “might” be employed to denote the “end” or “extremity” of anything, e. g., in respect to “time,” and some have supposed that there is a reference here to the later periods of the Roman empire. See Poole’s “Synopsis.”

But the word is also used to denote “the sum,” or “the whole number;” and then the phrase is equivalent to “a part - as” e. g., in the phrase האלהים בית כלי מקצת miqetsât kelēy bēyth hâ'elohı̂ym - from the sum of the vessels of the house of God” Dan 1:2; that is, a portion of the whole number, or a part. Compare Neh 7:70, “from the sum of the heads of the fathers;” that is, a part of them. In the latter part of the clause it is מנת mı̂nnâh - “from it;” that is, a part of it; partly. The entire phrase means that one part of the whole would be strong, and one part would be fragile. The reference is not to the “time” when this would occur, but to the “fact” that it would be so. The idea in this verse does not vary materially from that in the former, except that in that, the prominent thought is, that there would be “strength” in the kingdom: in this, the idea is, that while there would be strength in the kingdom, there would be also the elements of weakness.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

This was plain in the civil wars of the Romans, the falling off of some countries, especially in and towards the end of it.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

42. Even the toes, the extremities of the kingdom, shall have in them something of the strength of iron, but shall be “brittle” and easily cracked.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Broken - This was plain in the civil wars of the Romans, and the falling off of some countries, especially towards the end of it.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.