Daniel 5:17-23

Life and all that it holds is God’s to give and God’s to take away. 

Be humble and know that He is God.

interpretation (Aram. peshar) (2:4; 4:6, 5:12, 16) Strong’s #6591: This word literally means “to untie” or “to loose.” In other words, Daniel could unravel the mysteries of dreams and visions: he could explain or solve them. Yet he was always quick to give God the credit for his ability. By the time of Jesus, rabbinic Judaism had interpreted much of the OT allegorically.

Daniel 5:17-23

¹⁷ Then Daniel answered, and said before the king, “Let your gifts be for yourself, and give your rewards to another; yet I will read the writing to the king, and make known to him the interpretation. ¹⁸ O king, the Most High God gave Nebuchadnezzar your father a kingdom and majesty, glory and honor. ¹⁹ And because of the majesty that He gave him, all peoples, nations, and languages trembled and feared before him. Whomever he wished, he executed; whomever he wished, he kept alive; whomever he wished, he set up; and whomever he wished, he put down. ²⁰ But when his heart was lifted up, and his spirit was hardened in pride, he was deposed from his kingly throne, and they took his glory from him. ²¹ Then he was driven from the sons of men, his heart was made like the beasts, and his dwelling was with the wild donkeys. They fed him with grass like oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till he knew that the Most High God rules in the kingdom of men, and appoints over it whomever He chooses.

²² “But you his son, Belshazzar, have not humbled your heart, although you knew all this. ²³ And you have lifted yourself up against the Lord of heaven. They have brought the vessels of His house before you, and you and your lords, your wives and your concubines, have drunk wine from them. And you have praised the gods of silver and gold, bronze and iron, wood and stone, which do not see or hear or know; and the God who holds your breath in His hand and owns all your ways, you have not glorified.

⁵ ‘I have made the earth, the man and the beast that are on the ground, by My great power and by My outstretched arm, and have given it to whom it seemed proper to Me. ⁶ And now I have given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, My servant; and the beasts of the field I have also given him to serve him. ⁷ So all nations shall serve him and his son and his son’s son, until the time of his land comes; and then many nations and great kings shall make him serve them. 

Jeremiah 27:5–7

¹⁷This decision is by the decree of the watchers, And the sentence by the word of the holy ones, In order that the living may know ^sThat the Most High rules in the kingdom of men, Gives it to whomever He will, And sets over it the lowest of men.’ 

Daniel 4:17