Daniel 4:29

Dan 4:29 At the end of twelve months he walked in the palace of the kingdom of Babylon.

Ver. 29. At the end of twelve months he walked,] scil., A year after the dream, the interpretation thereof, and the good counsel given him thereupon. It is some wonder how he could so soon forget all; but the world, with the lusts thereof, had hardened his heart.

In the palace of the kingdom.] His idle walk, and his stately palace, were some occasion of his pride and fall. He walketh and stalketh, musing of nothing but his own greatness only.

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.

twelve months--This respite was granted to him to leave him without excuse. So the hundred twenty years granted before the flood (Gen 6:3). At the first announcement of the coming judgment he was alarmed, as Ahab (Kg1 21:27), but did not thoroughly repent; so when judgment was not executed at once, he thought it would never come, and so returned to his former pride (Ecc 8:11).

in the palace--rather, upon the (flat) palace roof, whence he could contemplate the splendor of Babylon. So the heathen historian, ABYDENUS, records. The palace roof was the scene of the fall of another king (Sa2 11:2). The outer wall of Nebuchadnezzar's new palace embraced six miles; there were two other embattled walls within, and a great tower, and three brazen gates.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

(29) Twelve months—i.e., counting from the time of the vision. Sufficient time for repentance was mercifully granted to the king.

Palace of the kingdom of Babylon.—He had palaces in other towns. Daniel lays a stress upon the fact that this occurred in the town of Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar, the golden head of the image, was in the very centre of his dominions, in his own proud capital, when this occurred. It is needless, therefore, to assume that this was written by a person who lived a long way off from Babylon.

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

29. he was walking upon the royal palace of Babylon] ‘upon’ means on the roof of: cf. 2Sa_11:2.

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.

While the word was in the king's mouth, there fell a voice from heaven,.... Before the king had done speaking in the above boasting manner, an articulate voice from heaven was heard by him, and all about him, formed by the angels, and much like what the Jews call Bath Kol; see Act 12:21, so Abydenus (g), in the account he gives of Nebuchadnezzar's oration to the people, relates, that when the king had spoke it, , immediately he disappeared:

saying, O King Nebuchadnezzar, to thee it is spoken, the kingdom is departed from thee; that is, the administration of it; for he was not deposed, or declared to be no longer king; his office was not taken away from him, and another king set upon the throne; only the administration was taken into other hands, either of his wife or son, or his nobles; he being unfit for it, till such time as his reason returned to him.

(g) Apud Euseb. ut supra. (Praepar. Evangel. l. 9. c. 41. p. 457.)

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

At the end of twelve months - After the dream, and the interpretation - giving him ample opportunity to repent, and to reform his life, and to avoid the calamity.

He walked in the palace - Margin, “upon.” The margin is the more correct rendering. The roofs of houses in the East are made flat, and furnish a common place of promenade, especially in the cool of the evening. See the note at Mat 9:2. The Codex Chisianus has here, “The king walked upon the walls of the city with all his glory, and went around the towers, and answering, said.” The place, however, upon which he walked, appears to have been the roof of his own palace - doubtless reared so high that he could have a good view of the city from it.

Of the kingdom of Babylon - Appertaining to that kingdom; the royal residence. As it is to be supposed that this “palace of the kingdom,” on the roof of which the king walked, was what he had himself reared, and as this contributed much to the splendor of the capital of his empire, and doubtless was the occasion, in a considerable degree, of his vainglorious boasting when the judgment of heaven fell upon him Dan 4:30-31, a brief description of that palace seems to he not inappropriate. The description is copied from an article on Babylon in Kitto’s “Cyclopaedia of Biblical Literature,” vol. i. pp. 270, 271: “The new palace built by Nebuchadnezzar was prodigious in size and superb in embellishments. Its outer wall embraced six miles; within that circumference were two other embattled walls, besides a great tower. Three brazen gates led into the grand area, and every gate of consequence throughout the city was of brass. The palace was splendidly decorated with statues of men and animals, with vessels of gold and silver, and furnished with luxuries of all kinds brought thither from conquests in Egypt, Palestine, and Tyre. Its greatest boast were the hanging gardens, which acquired, even from Grecian writers, the appellation of one of the wonders of the world. They are attributed to the gallantry of Nebuchadnezzar, who constructed them in compliance with a wish of his queen Amytis to possess elevated groves, such as she had enjoyed on the hills around her native Ecbatana. Babylon was all flat, and to accomplish so extravagant a desire, an artificial mountain was reared, four hundred feet on each side, while terraces, one above another, rose to a height that overtopped the walls of the city, that is, above three hundred feet in elevation.

The ascent from terrace to terrace was made by corresponding flights of steps, while the terraces themselves were reared to their various stages on ranges of regular piers, which, forming a kind of vaulting, rose in succession one over the other to the required height of each terrace, the whole being bound together by a wall twenty-two feet in thickness. The level of each terrace or garden was then formed in the following manner: the tops of the piers were first laid over with flat stones, sixteen feet in length, and four in width; on these stones were spread beds of matting, then a thick layer of bitumen, after which came two courses of bricks, which were covered with sheets of solid lead. The earth was heaped on this platform, and in order to admit the roots of large trees, prodigious hollow piers were built and filled with mould. From the Euphrates, which flowed close to the foundation, water was drawn up by machinery. The whole, says Q. Curtius (Dan 4:5), had, to those who saw it from a distance, the appearance of woods overhanging mountains. The remains of this palace are found in the vast mound or hill called by the natives “Kasr.” It is of irregular form, eight hundred yards in length, and six hundred yards in breadth. Its appearance is constantly undergoing change from the continual digging which takes place in its inexhaustible quarries for brick of the strongest and finest material. Hence, the mass is furrowed into deep ravines, crossing and recrossing each other in every direction.”

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

Here we see God did forbear the execution of his judgment decreed the space of one whole year, which may be upon Daniel’s words, and he did reform somewhat, as Ahab was spared a good while upon his humiliation, 1Ki 21:27; and God would try him by giving him space of repentance, as he did to them before the flood, Gen 6:3; and to Jezebel, Rev 2:21; but it is most probable, though he may be a little astonished at the first, when he heard God’s decree against him, yet having this respite, he grew hardened, and thought it was over, and therefore spreads his plumes and strutted in his pride as high as ever.

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

29, 30. This picture of the king walking on the roof garden of the royal palace in Babylon and praising himself for his magnificent building enterprises finds an echo in almost every one of his inscriptions which have been preserved. [See Introduction, III, 3, (1); 4.] He was the greatest builder of all the Babylonian kings, rebuilding the capital city almost from its foundations. Again and again he records how “silver, gold, precious stones, copper, precious woods, all kinds of valuable things, the produce of the mountains, the fullness of the seas, rich presents, splendid gifts, to my city of Babylon into his [Bel-Marduk’s] presence I brought.”

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

Vers. 29-33.

The sudden collapse of pride.

Careful and costly measures had been furnished by God to restrain Nebuchadnezzar from the brink of ruin, to which he was fast hastening. The dream, with its appalling omens; the human messenger; the king"s conscience; all these were voices from the supreme court of heaven. But conscience was silenced, the prophet was forgotten, the sense of danger diminished; Nebuchadnezzar persisted in his sin, until the patience of God was exhausted.

I WE SEE PRIDE VAUNTING ITSELF IN BOASTFUL VAINGLORY. A year had elapsed since the faithful voice of Daniel had wakened the conscience of the king. At first the monarch intended to reform, but procrastination destroyed the sensitiveness of feeling, blinded him to the imminence of danger, and gave momentum to his downward course. The city grew in magnitude and in magnificence. The royal plans proceeded towards completion. Outward prosperity shone upon him in still clearer glory, Notwithstanding, the hour of reckoning was about to strike. Walking upon his elevated palace-roof, and surveying the grandeur of the city, Nebuchadnezzar gave the reins to natural pride thought and spoke as if there were none greater than he. This is the end pride ever aims at, viz. to make man a god unto himself. Yet was there a solitary stone in that vast pile that had been created by Nebuchadnezzar? Was the mind that designed the whole self-originated? Were the ten thousand artisans who had daily wrought upon those buildings the workmanship of man or of God? Pride is idolatry. Pride becomes mad atheism. There is no sin that is so frequently and freely condemned in Scripture as pride. By it the angels lost their high estate. Into this pit Adam fell. "Ye shall be as gods," the tempter said. "God resisteth the proud." They are a smoke in his nostrils. "Pride goeth before destruction." One step only between haughtiness and hell. Insolent arrogance verges on madness.

II WE SEE HUMAN PRIDE MOVING TO ACTIVITY THE COUNSELS OF HEAVEN. If the statesmen or the artisans in Babylon overheard the utterance of the king, they might have regarded it as a harmless outburst of vanity. Yet God doth not so regard it. It disturbs the tranquillity of heaven. It is regarded there as the language of hostile defiance. The limit of God"s forbearance was leached. There is a time to be quiet and a time to act. The cup of Nebuchadnezzar"s sin was full. He had despised the messages of kindly expostulation from Jehovah, and now no delay was permitted. The king had barely ceased to speak when Jehovah responded. But the words of Nebuchadnezzar were not intended for the ears of God. Ah! still he heard them. He regarded them as an indirect menace to him, and he at once replies. The verdict has passed the Judge"s lips. The kingdom is alienated. In a moment empire is lost. Rank, honour, power, are lost. Manhood is lost. Intelligence, memory, reason, love, all lust. Bare existence only remains. Like the prodigal boy, he descends step by step into a deeper degradation, and at length herds with the beasts of the field. Yet this is but an outward and visible portraiture of the inward degradation.

III WE SEE HUMAN PRIDE MEETING WITH FITTING RETRIBUTION. We have here in concrete form in the history of a living person the abstract truth, "He that exalteth himself shall be abased." This is its natural and fitting outcome its proper fruit. We cannot doubt that every form and degree of sin has, in the Divine code, a suitable and adequate punishment. There is not simply one rigid penalty for every mode and measure of transgression. The justice that presides on the eternal throne has eyes of subtlest discrimination and balances of exquisite nicety. Every step in the judicial procedure of God is accordant with natural principles. Even the forces of material nature will possibly be employed in vindicating the Divine Majesty. The indolence and sensual indulgence of the Babylonian palace served to emasculate Nebuchadnezzar. The rousing energy which war had demanded in earlier years had braced the monarch"s mind. But now the years of public peace had been so misused that inertia bred softness and luxury produced effeminacy. Step by step character deteriorated, though, perhaps, not detected by mortal eye. At length, by the Divine fiat, Reason abdicated her seat; the animal got the better of the man. In his imbecile condition the king imagined himself an ox, and preferred to browse in the fields. He was held last by this hallucination. His relatives and attendants, very possibly, feared to resist him. They humoured his infatuation until, in the royal paddock, his hair grew ragged and coarse, his nails became long and bent like eagles" claws. This is the monarch who disdained to recognize God the monarch who plumed himself on his self-sufficiency! Draw near, all proud doffers of God, and see this portrait of yourselves! D.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

they will banish Aram. טָרְדִין. an expression of driving away.

Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.