Nebuchadnezzar was one of the greatest and most powerful rulers this world has ever known. His unharnessed ambition and drive for bigger and greater things is evident from the opening verses of the Book of Daniel. It is most instructive to observe, however, that this mighty monarch with all the earthly glory and dominion he possessed was a mere pawn in the hand of the God of heaven, Jer. 27. 6-8, and in all the success he perceived to be his own, he was merely working out, albeit unwittingly, the purpose of God.
Perhaps the best and most concise summary of the man and his reign is given by Daniel in his account of Belshazzar’s death, Dan. 5. 18-21. From this section we gather that the kingdom with all its majesty, glory and honour were given to him, and taken from him, by God. Nebuchadnezzar was a ruthless king, demonstrated by the fact that ‘whom he would he slew; and whom he would he kept alive’.
He was a strange mixture of pride and humility, with periods in his reign when he honoured God, and other times when he acted in defiance of God and His word. Time and time again he was brought to witness something of the power of God, 3. 24-26, and also received in his dreams something of the revelation of the mind of God. Despite all of this, he seems to fall into the category of the man in Job chapter 33 verse 14 to whom God speaks ‘once, yea twice’, and he perceives it not. The swiftness of divine judgement and the extent of the king’s humiliation is most sobering. As he walked in his palace musing with great pride on the achievements he attributed to himself, the hand of God struck. While the word was still in the king’s mouth, there fell a voice from heaven saying ‘thy kingdom is departed from thee’, Dan. 4. 31. The king who had enjoyed unrivalled power now experienced unparalleled humiliation until at the end of the days (by which we understand the period of divinely determined probation), his understanding returned to him and he ‘blessed the most high’, 4. 34. Nebuchadnezzar’s recovery is a tribute to the mercy of God, and as a recovered soul he ends his days better than many of the kings who had gone before him.
