---
title: "Commentary on Daniel, Volume 1"
author: "John Calvin"
translator: "Thomas Myers"
languages: [en]
shelf: "Commentaries"
section: 43 of 46
url: https://scriptura.si/works/john-calvin-commentary-on-daniel-volume-1/43/
cite: "John Calvin, tr. Thomas Myers, Commentary on Daniel, Volume 1, section 43. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/john-calvin-commentary-on-daniel-volume-1/43/"
---

# Commentary on Daniel, Volume 1

*John Calvin, tr. Thomas Myers*

Calvin on the prophet Daniel, volume 1 of 2.

## 43. The Madness of Nebuchadnezzar

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/john-calvin-commentary-on-daniel-volume-1/43/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/john-calvin-commentary-on-daniel-volume-1/43/#p-N

[¶0] Dissertation 15.

[¶1] Daniel 4:25

[¶2] THE narrative of this chapter has met with much disbelief among the skeptical school of theology. The want of corresponding profane history is a subject of complaint. Origen found himself deserted by all ancient historians, and Jerome searched them in vain for any confirmation of the sacred text. We must remember, however, that the historians whom we reckon ancient, are very modern with reference to these early times. Megasthenes, for instance, wrote rather earlier than Berosus, about 280 A.C., at the court of Seleucus Nicator, king of Babylon, and we have only portions of their writings second hand. Diocles, the author of a Persian history, and Abydenus, of an Assyrian and Median, obtained their materials from Chaldee traditions, many ages after the events recorded. The Chaldee chroniclers, Hengstenberg assures us, were, notorious for their national vanity and boasting, and were not likely to record anything derogatory to their earliest hero. But even Bertholdt is compelled to confess that Abydenus has preserved a legend similar to the narrative of this chapter. “On ascending the roof of his palace, he became inspired by some god, and delivered himself as follows: — Babylonians! I Nebuchadnezzar foretell you a calamity that is to happen, which neither my ancestor Bel nor queen Beltis can persuade the Fates to avert. There shall come a Persian mule, (one having parents of different countries,) having your own gods in alliance with him, and shall impose servitude upon you, with the head of a Mede, the boast of the Assyrians.” Now madness and inspiration were usually connected by the ancients; the time and place too, correspond with Daniel’s narrative; the extasis occurred after the completion of his conquests, and the phrase, “by some god,” refers to a foreign deity, whom we know to be the Jehovah of the Hebrews. The narrative of the frenzy which rendered him unfit for government, is allowed to be credible by the chief skeptics of the continent. Michaelis allows “that this calamity more frequently attacks great and extraordinary minds than ordinary men.” Our physicians can now explain the reason through their improved knowledge of the brain and its functions. Pathological and psychological science is here more useful than all the conjectures of disbelieving theologians. In the early days of the Church, the greatest difficulty was found in taking this narrative literally: hence expositors treated it as an allegory. The king was held to represent Satan falling from heaven, and the whole account of his dwelling with the beasts of the field was taken figuratively, and rejected historically. Jerome, however, while he records this view at great length, adheres to the literal account.

[¶3] The disbelief of the narrative above referred to may have arisen from an erroneous interpretation of the sacred text. For some writers have affirmed a complete metamorphosis of the man into the beast; a conclusion by no means warranted by the language of the passage. Tertullian has correctly explained the clause, “his hair became like eagle’s feathers,” by capilli incuria horrorem aquilinum præferente, since it was a natural consequence of his wild mode of life, and a usual mark of the sensualizing effect of prolonged insanity. And with reference to the time of this affliction, Hengstenberg quotes Calvin with approbation, for agreeing with the idea of an indefinite period implied by the word “seven.” Calvin, however, inclines too much towards the theory of the indefinite use of definite numbers. There seems no good reason why the number “seven” should not be taken strictly and literally, nor why the word “times” עדנון, gni-danin, should not mean years. Even Hengstenberg gives way too much to the plausible conceits of his wily antagonists. Rosenmuller correctly limits the expression to seven years, a period by no means unnatural for the continuance of a highly excited state of the brain, producing mania, accompanied by all the symptoms mentioned in this chapter. Oecolampadius views it as a case of mental disease, and quotes many similar narratives from Aben-Ezra, Pausanias, and Augustine, bringing forward the fables of the heathen poets, as illustrating the passage. For the opinion of Tertullian, and various Jewish and continental writers, Kitto’s Bibl. Cyclop. may be consulted, especially as the view there set forth by Dr. Wright is sound, judicious, and practical.

### The Edict of Praise

[¶5] Dissertation 16.

[¶6] Daniel 4:37

[¶7] This monarch probably lived but a single year after his recovery; and some writers have thought that his restoration produced a conversion to the worship of the one true God. But Hengstenberg agrees with our author: “Compare Calvin on the passages,” says he, “who strikingly proves from them the incorrectness of the opinion of very many expositors as to the radical and entire conversion of Nebuchadnezzar.” Calvin is clearly right, for it was customary with the Persians to blend the doctrines of Zoroaster with the Babylonian astrology. The scriptural language of the king has been treated as an argument against the authenticity of the decree. Eichhorn and Bertholdt object to his speaking like an orthodox Jew in the phraseology of the Old Testament. But the affinity of certain phrases with other passages of Scripture, is no argument against its authenticity. The monarch had held much intercourse with Daniel; he had doubtless heard his method of expressing reverence and respect for the one true God, and he would repeat such expressions the more exactly in proportion to his want of personal experience of their meaning. In the case of the edict of Cyrus, brief as it is, several references are found to the prophecies of Isaiah. As to the change of person from the third to the first, Hengstenberg approves of Calvin’s suggestion. Oecolampadius considers the king really converted, and through knowing the angel to be the Christ, he supposes him not only a convert, but an apostle. This is far too favorable a view of his character; but it is instructive to ascertain the decisions of various eminent Reformers, and to observe which of them stands the scrutinizing test of an appeal to posterity.

### Belshazzar and the Feast

[¶9] Dissertation 17.

[¶10] Daniel 5:1, 2.

[¶11] This monarch is here said to be the son of Nebuchadnezzar. The Duke of Manchester takes this literally, while the usual opinion is that he was his grandson. “No king,” says he, “in Berosus, Megasthenes, or Polyhistor, corresponds with him. The Scripture says that Nebuchadnezzar was his father, which most people say means grandfather, and it is not to be denied, that by son, grandson may be intended; but in this case it is contrary to all the evidence we have on the subject. The author of the Scholastical History reports that Belshazzar was son of the daughter of Darius. Nebuchadnezzar the Second did, as I conceive, marry the daughter of Darius, which would make Belshazzar his son. But admitting that Belshazzar was paternal grandson of Nebuchadnezzar, none of the successors of Nebuchadnezzar could have been in that relation to him.” The Persian writer Merkhond is the next quoted, by whose help the duke identifies Ka’oos with Nebuchadnezzar the First, Afrasiab with Astyages, and Siyawesh, the son of Ka’oos, with Belshazzar. It is then conjectured that this king never reigned except during his father’s lifetime: if he was “the king” during his father’s madness, the omission of his name by profane historians is thus accounted for. An Oxford MS. is quoted to shew “that Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar were reigning at Babylon when Darius and Coresch were reigning over Persia.

[¶12] This hypothesis interferes so much with the ordinary deductions from ancient historians, that we must not pass it over without special notice.

[¶13] The received hypothesis has been so clearly stated by Wells, that reference to it is all that is needed. Jeremiah (Jeremiah 27:6) had predicted that Nebuchadnezzar’s kingdom was to be prolonged through the life of his son and his son’s son. Ptolemy’s Astronomical Canon is the best known authority for the history of Nebuchadnezzar’s successors, as we have detailed them in a former Dissertation, and they are also found in a readable form in Stackhouse’s History of the Bible. The last of these kings is Nabonadius, and he is supposed to be the same as the Nabonnedus of Berosus, the Labynetus of Herodotus, and the Belshazzar of Daniel. During his reign, says Berosus, the walls of the city near the river were strengthened by brick-work and bitumen; and in its seventeenth year Cyrus advanced against Babylon, the king met him with a large army, but was defeated, and then enclosed himself within Borsippa. Cyrus then took Babylon, and having determined to pull down its outer fortifications, he returned to Borsippa and besieged it. Nabonnedus then gave himself up, and Cyrus permitted him to close his life peaceably in Carmania, where he remained till his death. The narrative of Herodotus is slightly at variance with this. Cyrus made war against Labynetus, the son of Nitocris, a very spirited and powerful queen, and succeeded to the kingdom of Assyria “from his fathers.” Having turned the stream of the river Euphrates, he entered the city through its bed, and when the center was captured, those who dwelt at the extremities were ignorant of their disaster, for they “were celebrating a festival that day with dancing and all manner of rejoicing, till they received certain information of the general fate. And thus Babylon was the first time taken.” Herodotus also records its second capture through the treachery of Zopyrus, in the reign of Darius Hystaspes, (lib. 3 section. 159;) and with this second capture the noble duke supposes the scriptural narrative to be co-incident.

[¶14] The Cyropaedia of Xenophon affords its testimony to a similar event, and as its historic value has been altogether denied, we cannot certainly pronounce the event the same. Vitringa has vindicated its historical truth, and Gesenius and Bertholdt have admitted it. Hengstenberg quotes lib. 7 section. 5, combines it with Herod., lib. 1 section. 191, and remarks, “This testimony of Xenophon, too, is so much the more in our favor, as it confirms the particular circumstance that the nobles were at the feast assembled at the table of the king.” He adds, “The precise agreement of Daniel with Herodotus and Xenophon is acknowledged by Munter, 50 100 page 67, to be astonishing, and even Gesenius, Z. Jes. 1, page 655, cannot help calling it very astonishing.” For a fuller discussion of all details, we refer at length to his conclusive work, merely giving our vote in his favor, and against the ingenious hypothesis which it has become necessary to state and explain.

[¶15] The Great Feast. — The original word for feast is “bread,” and this being united with “wine,” becomes the usual mode of describing an eastern feast, where the people are all great eaters of bread. “To eat bread,” and to “set on bread,” is the scriptural method of indicating a feast. The number of the guests may not have amounted to a thousand, as this is an eastern expression for a large and surprising number, yet it is not incredible, since Harmer has informed us that “a quadrangular court, within the first or outer gate of the palace, was made use of for this purpose.” Willet reminds us of this eastern way of multiplying numbers by alluding to the 10,000 guests said to be present at Alexander’s feast, and each of whom received a golden cup. Ptolemy, the father of Cleopatra, made a similar banquet for Pompey. It is supposed to have been an annual solemnity in honor of some deity, and the art of “tasting of the wine” (verse 2) alludes to the custom of tasting the libation previous to the sacrifice. Wintle very appositely quotes Virgil, AEn. lib. i. 741, —

[¶16] “Primaque libato summo tenus attigit ore.”

[¶17] This view is rendered highly probable by the Chaldean custom recorded by Athenaeus, of sacrificing to small images, of various metals, in human shape, an idolatry described in Baruch, Daniel 6: 3. Willet quotes Junius as stating that this feast occurred on the 16th day of the month Loon, when it approached in character the Saturnalia and Bacchanalia of the Greeks. “Tasting the wine” is rendered by the Vulgate and the Alexandrine version as if its sense were “drunken,” and thus the general idea of licentious revelry is carried out.

### The Queen

[¶19] Dissertation 18.

[¶20] Daniel 5:10

[¶21] Calvin doubts whether this was the wife or grandmother of Belshazzar. But there is another possible solution. Prideaux supposes she was the mother of the king, following the narrative of Herodotus, though Grotius and Josephus represent her as the widow of Nebuchadnezzar. The author of “The Times of Daniel” differs from the received view of the times of Nitocris; she reigned, he concludes, “in the generation before Nebuchadnezzar’s father.” Her name is not found in the Astronomical Canon, and consequently either Herodotus or the Canon must be mistaken. Nitocris, says Herodotus, lived five generations after Semiramis, but then, according to Bryant, eight different periods have been assigned for his reign, between A.C. 2177 and 713. Notwithstanding the celebrity which Herodotus has conferred upon his name, it is impossible now to ascertain whether she was the queen-mother alluded to in the text, but it is equally injudicious to pronounce positively that she was not. Hengstenberg has discussed this question with his usual sagacity. Heeren makes her the contemporary of Nebuchadnezzar, and probably his wife; but Hengstenberg inclines to the view of her being the queen-mother. “We may then justly compare what Herodotus says of Nitocris with that which occurs here of the queen, and it only need be quoted to shew a perfect agreement.” Rosenmuller agrees with Jerome in thinking her the widow of Nebuchadnezzar, and Oecolampadius adopts the same view, when commenting with great spirit and animation on this point.