Daniel 2:2-5

2:2 The king issued an order ¹  to summon the magicians, astrologers, sorcerers, and wise men ²  in order to explain his dreams to him. ³  So they came and awaited the king’s instructions. ⁴ 

2:3 The king told them, “I have had a dream, ⁵  and I ⁶  am anxious to understand the dream.” 2:4 The wise men replied to the king: [What follows is in Aramaic ⁷ ] “O king, live forever! Tell your servants the dream, and we will disclose its ⁸  interpretation.” 2:5 The king replied ⁹  to the wise men, “My decision is firm. ¹⁰  If you do not inform me of both the dream and its interpretation, you will be dismembered ¹¹  and your homes reduced to rubble!

Daniel 2:10

2:10 The wise men replied to the king, “There is no man on earth who is able to disclose the king’s secret, ¹²  for no king, regardless of his position and power, has ever requested such a thing from any magician, astrologer, or wise man.

Daniel 4:4

Nebuchadnezzar Dreams of a Tree Chopped Down

4:4 (4:1) ¹³  I, Nebuchadnezzar, was relaxing in my home, ¹⁴  living luxuriously ¹⁵  in my palace.

Daniel 5:7

5:7 The king called out loudly ¹⁶  to summon ¹⁷  the astrologers, wise men, and diviners. The king proclaimed ¹⁸  to the wise men of Babylon that anyone who could read this inscription and disclose its interpretation would be clothed in purple ¹⁹  and have a golden collar ²⁰  placed on his neck and be third ruler in the kingdom.

Daniel 5:11

5:11 There is a man in your kingdom who has within him a spirit of the holy gods. In the days of your father, he proved to have ²¹  insight, discernment, and wisdom like that ²²  of the gods. ²³  King Nebuchadnezzar your father appointed him chief of the magicians, astrologers, wise men, and diviners. ²⁴ 

[2:2]  ¹ tn Heb “said.” So also in v. 12.

[2:2]  ² tn Heb “Chaldeans.” The term Chaldeans (Hebrew כַּשְׂדִּים, kasdim) is used in the book of Daniel both in an ethnic sense and, as here, to refer to a caste of Babylonian wise men and astrologers.

[2:2]  ³ tn Heb “to explain to the king his dreams.”

[2:2]  ⁴ tn Heb “stood before the king.”

[2:3]  ⁵ tn Heb “I have dreamed a dream” (so KJV, ASV).

[2:3]  ⁶ tn Heb “my spirit.”

[2:4]  ⁷ sn Contrary to common belief, the point here is not that the wise men (Chaldeans) replied to the king in the Aramaic language, or that this language was uniquely the language of the Chaldeans. It was this view that led in the past to Aramaic being referred to as “Chaldee.” Aramaic was used as a lingua franca during this period; its origins and usage were not restricted to the Babylonians. Rather, this phrase is better understood as an editorial note (cf. NAB) marking the fact that from 2:4b through 7:28 the language of the book shifts from Hebrew to Aramaic. In 8:1, and for the remainder of the book, the language returns to Hebrew. Various views have been advanced to account for this change of language, most of which are unconvincing. Most likely the change in language is a reflection of stages in the transmission history of the book of Daniel.

[2:4]  ⁸ tn Or “the.”

[2:5]  ⁹ tn Aram “answered and said,” a common idiom to indicate a reply, but redundant in contemporary English.

[2:5]  ¹⁰ tn It seems clear from what follows that Nebuchadnezzar clearly recalls the content of the dream, although obviously he does not know what to make of it. By not divulging the dream itself to the would-be interpreters, he intends to find out whether they are simply leading him on. If they can tell him the dream’s content, which he is able to verify, he then can have confidence in their interpretation, which is what eludes him. The translation “the matter is gone from me” (cf. KJV, ASV), suggesting that the king had simply forgotten the dream, is incorrect. The Aramaic word used here (אַזְדָּא, ’azda’) is probably of Persian origin; it occurs in the OT only here and in v. 8. There are two main possibilities for the meaning of the word: “the matter is promulgated by me” (see KBL 1048 s.v.) and therefore “publicly known” (cf. NRSV; F. Rosenthal, Grammar, 62-63, §189), or “the matter is irrevocable” (cf. NAB, NIV, TEV, CEV, NLT; HALOT 1808 s.v. אזד; cf. also BDB 1079 s.v.). The present translation reflects this latter option. See further E. Vogt, Lexicon linguae aramaicae, 3.

[2:5]  ¹¹ tn Aram “made limbs.” Cf. 3:29.

[2:10]  ¹² tn Aram “matter, thing.”

[4:4]  ¹³ sn This verse marks the beginning of chap. 4 in the Aramaic text of Daniel (see the note on 4:1). The Greek OT (LXX) has the following addition: “In the eighteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign he said.” This date would suggest a link to the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. In general, the LXX of chapters 4-6 is very different from the MT, so much so that the following notes will call attention only to selected readings. In Daniel 4 the LXX lacks sizable portions of material in the MT (e.g., vv. 3-6, 31-32), includes sizable portions of material not in the MT (e.g., v. 14a, parts of vv. 16, 28), has a different order of some material (e.g., v. 8 after v. 9), and in some instances is vastly different from the MT (e.g., vv. 30, 34). Whether these differences are due to an excessively paraphrastic translation technique adopted for these chapters in the LXX, or are due to differences in the underlying Vorlage of the LXX, is a disputed matter. The latter seems more likely. There is a growing trend in modern scholarship to take the LXX of chapters 4-6 much more seriously than was the case in most earlier text-critical studies that considered this issue.

[4:4]  ¹⁴ tn Aram “my house.”

[4:4]  ¹⁵ tn Aram “happy.”

[5:7]  ¹⁶ tn Aram “in strength.”

[5:7]  ¹⁷ tn Aram “cause to enter.”

[5:7]  ¹⁸ tn Aram “answered and said.”

[5:7]  ¹⁹ sn Purple was a color associated with royalty in the ancient world.

[5:7]  ²⁰ tn The term translated “golden collar” here probably refers to something more substantial than merely a gold chain (cf. NIV, NCV, NRSV, NLT) or necklace (cf. NASB).

[5:11]  ²¹ tn Aram “[there were] discovered to be in him.”

[5:11]  ²² tn Aram “wisdom like the wisdom.” This would be redundant in terms of English style.

[5:11]  ²³ tc Theodotion lacks the phrase “and wisdom like the wisdom of the gods.”

[5:11]  ²⁴ tc The MT includes a redundant reference to “your father the king” at the end of v. 11. None of the attempts to explain this phrase as original are very convincing. The present translation deletes the phrase, following Theodotion and the Syriac.