Daniel 4:31-32 “While the word was still in the king's mouth, a voice fell from heaven: "King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is spoken: the kingdom has departed from you! (32) And they shall drive you from men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field. They shall make you eat grass like oxen; and seven times shall pass over you, until you know that the Most High rules in the kingdom of men, and gives it to whomever He chooses.”
King Nebuchadnezzar was the longest-reigning and most powerful monarch of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, and it was God who put him there. The context of the above passage of scripture is that God had shown Nebuchadnezzar in a dream that the reason for his greatness and the greatness of his kingdom was because God had brought it to pass. Nebuchadnezzar had started to become prideful, attributing his achievements to his own prowess. God therefore warned him in a dream that for seven months God would reduce him to behaving like an animal that eats grass and lives in the fields, until he recognised that it was God who had made him such a powerful monarch. The prophet Daniel in interpreting the dream for Nebuchadnezzar admonished him to live as righteously as possible to try averting the judgement heaven had pronounced upon him. A year later Nebuchadnezzar started to act prideful again and the response from heaven was immediate, for in the above passage an angel spoke to him pronouncing the Lord’s judgement upon him. He lost his mind and ended up living like an animal in the fields. After seven months his reasoning returned to him and he acknowledged that God indeed reigns in the affairs of men and from that moment on he walked in obedience to the Lord. And so the point is very clear from this account that God is the one who raises up heads of state and their governments, and they are subject to do His bidding even though in most instances governments do not even acknowledge Him, nevertheless God is the one who directs their every move.
Michael E.B. Maher
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