By No Human Hand

The interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel 2 reveals the sequence of kingdoms from Babylon to Rome. The significance of this sequence comes at the end when the God of heaven sets up a kingdom unlike all the others. This eternal kingdom breaks all the other kingdoms into pieces and is depicted in the dream as a stone cut from a mountain by no human hand and grows into a great mountain that fills the earth. Let’s see what David Helm has to stay about this stone in his commentary on Daniel in the God’s Word for You series.

This post is just a small excerpt from David Helm’s exposition of Daniel 2 in the God’s Word for You series. Make sure you pick up a copy of this series for your Olive Tree Library to get the rest!

A Statue and a Stone

At last, we discover the content of the dream that has cost the king countless sleepless nights, and almost cost his wise men their lives. It is a dream about a great statue, “mighty and of exceeding brightness” (v 31); but more than that, it is a vision of a “stone … cut out by no human hand” (v 34); and therefore, as we will see, it is a dream about the cross and the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Dream and the Meaning

Daniel told the king that his troubling vision was of an image of a person, both mighty and frightening (v 31), made of gold at its top, silver, bronze, and then iron and clay at its feet (v 32–33). Then the stone “struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces” (v 34). The image is not only destroyed, but it disintegrates (v 35); “but the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth” (v 35).

That is the content; next Daniel gives “its interpretation” (v 36). Nebuchadnezzar—to whom God has given dizzying power, both in its breadth and depth (v 37–38)—is “the head of gold” (v 38). After him will come another, inferior, kingdom—implicitly, this is the silver, since a third, “bronze” kingdom will follow it (v 39). And fourthly, “there shall be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron” which “shatters all things” (v 40). Strangely, though, this strongest of all kingdoms will also be made from clay—it will be “divided” (v 41), “partly strong and partly brittle” (v 42), and so it “will not hold together” (v 43).

Then comes the stone—and the stone represents a kingdom that “the God of heaven will set up … that shall never be destroyed” (v 44), that will supersede all the previous kingdoms. And the king, Daniel says, should be in no doubt that this vision will one day be reality; these things have been made known by “a great God,” and so “the dream is certain, and its interpretation sure” (v 45).

A Relief for the King

When the interpretation was given, I imagine Nebuchadnezzar would have breathed a sigh of relief, for, contrary to conventional retellings, the destruction of the image by the stone didn’t mean the downfall of his own kingdom. The made-for-TV-stone-smashing stuff was reserved for the distant future. What the dream did confirm to Nebuchadnezzar, however, was that his glorious kingdom rule was his by divine right. Yes, the day would eventually come when Babylon would be replaced—but it would be “after you” (v 39), rather than coming during his watch! Even the change of metals, moving as they did from greater to lesser, indicated that the successive transitions after him came with a downgrade attached (v 32–33). What followed him would be inferior in quality—that is, until God, who dwells in the heavens, decided to replace all earthly kingdoms with his eternal one.

From our vantage point, it is relatively easy to identify the kingdoms represented. The kingdom of Babylon eventually gave way to the Medo-Persians, who were themselves replaced by ancient Greece, which in turn bent the knee to the irrepressible rise of Rome. These major transitions in power are well known. But they would happen after Nebuchadnezzar’s reign.

The conventional treatment of this passage in Christian circles is therefore puzzling. To center solely on the idea that this text was meant to show Nebuchadnezzar that a sovereign God stands ready to smash him for his many sins seems absurd. Rather, the dream was meant to announce to Nebuchadnezzar the good news of his own rule, and the very good news of God’s coming kingdom! And the fact that the vision was given to the king (and not to Daniel) only demonstrates the lengths God intends to go to in ensuring that this word gets out to the world. God has a word for the world—a word about his coming kingdom—and mercifully, he is intent on making it known to the ends of the earth. It would be a mistake to limit the range of a passage about the kingdom of God to one that celebrates a severe sovereignty at the expense of saying anything about salvation.

The Stone

The climax of the dream concerns the stone (v 34–35). Are we still waiting for it? Has it already come? Clearly, as a matter of chronology, we should be looking for God’s eternal kingdom to come as a follow-up to Roman rule. So, what are we to make of the stone?

Prior to the writing of Daniel, the stone had been used to speak of one who would arise from the tribe of Jacob to save God’s people. Long ago Israel had been promised that the blessings of the everlasting hills would come “by the hands of the Mighty One of Jacob (from there is the Shepherd, the Stone of Israel)” (Genesis 49:24). This stone imagery was further developed in the Psalms; the stone would be rejected, but would nevertheless become the chief cornerstone (Psalm 118:22). Isaiah then carried it along with a prophecy that this stone would become a sanctuary for some, and a rock of offense for others—it would cause some to stumble and be broken (Isaiah 8:14–15). Daniel was, therefore, not the first to speak of a stone.

The Kingdom in the Gospels

But he was the last, until several centuries later, when an itinerant preacher appears on the scene in Israel, announcing that the kingdom of God is at hand. He appears as Israel lies under Roman domination; Rome exercises an iron-like grip over the land God had given his people.

This new proclamation, as you might expect, begins to attract seekers and skeptics alike. And when this preacher, Jesus of Nazareth, begins doing signs that replace the impoverished state of men and women with new beginnings, things really start to heat up. Jesus even went so far as to identity himself with the wise man who could explain God’s plan for the world, because he had come for this very purpose (Mark 1:38).

Eventually, the religious leaders dismiss both Jesus and his teaching. Yet when they do, he speaks a parable against them (Luke 20:9–18) where he likens their rejection of him to the killing of a vineyard owner’s son and rightful heir by his rebellious tenants—and goes on to gather up all these Old Testament stone references and apply them to himself. After quoting from Psalm 118 directly, Jesus goes on to allude to Isaiah 8 and Daniel 2: “Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him” (Luke 20:18).

In saying this at the end of a parable predicting his execution, Jesus is tying his own death to the stone that comes from heaven. He is the one “cut out by no human hand” (Daniel 2:34), which brings down all human kingdoms and ushers in the eternal kingdom of God. With the cross and resurrection comes the everlasting kingdom.

The Kingdom in Acts

Luke will go on in the book of Acts to show how this kingdom expands. It isn’t through geopolitical rule, but spiritual rule—rule that pulls people out from their heart allegiances to self and sin, and into identification with Christ and the church. It was a kingdom that had, by the end of Acts, subjects in Rome, the heart of the greatest empire the world had yet seen. It was a kingdom that, a few centuries later, had taken over that empire, so that its own emperor worshiped the “stone,” the Lord Jesus. It was a kingdom that outlasted the Roman Empire, and still continues today.

What this means for you and me is this: that God has already set up, in Christ’s death, an eternal kingdom over the whole world. God is telling us that he sets kings up and takes them down; and that in Jesus Christ, we have a ruler that will never come off the throne. With this King, there will never be an “after you”—his rule is eternal.

Despite Daniel’s God-given interpretation, Nebuchadnezzar’s dream remained something of a mystery until Jesus came. So we have a great advantage over Nebuchadnezzar. He may have had all the prestige and power that the world has to offer, but we have the advantage of perspective. We live on the far side of the arrival of God’s forever kingdom. For Nebuchadnezzar, God’s word came in a dream, and was something to be played out only on a distant horizon. For us, the hidden word has now been made fully known (see Daniel 2:2, 5, 6, 9, 28, 29, 30 and 47). Jesus is the king over God’s forever kingdom, and his work on the cross was the act that smashed every other rival kingdom.

Questions for Reflection

1. How has this passage thrilled you both about God’s sovereignty and his salvation?
2. How does seeing the cross as the act that smashed every other kingdom-rival make you more grateful for it, and more challenged by it?

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