Daniel 4:37

Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise and extol and honour the King of heaven,.... Now he knew that the heavens ruled, and that there was a God and a King there, above all gods and kings; who had brought him

Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise and extol and honour the King of heaven, all whose works are truth, and his ways judgment: and those that walk in pride he is able to abase.

Thus can the Lord make the stoutest hearts to stoop, and do him homage. This doxology proceeds from his heart. God is truth essentially; he is the rule and standard of truth, his words are truth, his ways are truth: and they are judgment; he is wise, and hath dealt justly with me for my pride, and in very faithfulness hath afflicted me, and in very tenderness hath restored me: I do and ever shall adore him for it. Those that walk in pride he is able to abase; as he hath declared upon me, in stupendous changes, which I proclaim to all the world for his glory. He had a just controversy with me, and I have no ground to quarrel with him, but to give him glory by this confession.

Daniel 4:37 Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise and extol and honour the King of heaven, all whose works [are] truth, and his ways judgment: and those that walk in pride he is able to abase.Ver. 37. Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise.] God, as he is the first author of all, so to him as to the utmost end, quasi circulo quodam confecto, all honour ought to return. All whose works are truth,] i.e., Right and righteous. And those that walk in pride he is able to abase.] See Daniel 4:33. “ Ingentes quercus, annosas fulminat ornos. ” - Claudian

(37) The King of heaven.—How far the king arrived at a belief in one God is not clear. There may be noticed, however, a progress in his spiritual character, effected by the grace of God, after each of the interviews which he held with the prophet. At first (Daniel 2:26) his belief was no higher than that which a heathen has in his own superstitions. This develops (Daniel 2:47) into a belief that Daniel’s God is “a God of gods, a Lord of kings, and a revealer of secrets.” But even at that time he had not arrived at anything like a belief that Jehovah was equal to his own gods. The story of the three holy children shows how little depth there was in his former profession, for in Daniel 3:15 he is represented as setting himself above all gods. After the miracle wrought in their behalf he acknowledges Jehovah to be “the most high God,” though he continued to regard Him as only on a level with his own Bel-Merodach. This chapter represents him as recognising “the Most High” to be the cause of his recovery, and as praising the “King of heaven.” Holding, as he did, the Babylonian theory of sickness, he must have supposed himself to have been under the influence of some evil spirit; and, with a view to his recovery, his magicians must have treated his disease with charms, amulets, exorcisms, and by placing before him images of his gods. This thanksgiving makes it possible to suppose that he had relinquished much of his belief in his former superstitions, and that he was advancing towards, if not actually in possession of, the truth.

Verse 37. Now I - praise and extol] It is very probable that Nebuchadnezzar was a true convert; that he relapsed no more into idolatry, and died in the faith of the God of Israel. It is supposed that he lived seventeen years after his restoration. But the authorized Version, which is followed in the margin, states the date of this decree to be B.C. 563, the year preceding Nebuchadnezzar's death.

37. Nebuchadnezzar’s final doxology. extol] or exalt: Psalms 30:1; Psalms 118:28; Psalms 145:1, &c. truth … judgement] cf. Psalms 111:7. and those that walk in pride, &c.] Cf. Ezekiel 17:24; Psalms 18:27; Psalms 75:7; also Proverbs 16:18. Nebuchadnezzar recognizes that the humiliation which he has experienced is a punishment for his pride. “The Bible always represents to us that pride and arrogant self-confidence are an offence against God. The doom fell on Nebuchadnezzar while the haughty boast was still in the king’s mouth. The suddenness of the nemesis of pride is closely paralleled by the scene in the Acts of the Apostles in which Herod Agrippa I. is represented as entering the theatre to receive the deputies of Tyre and Sidon”; and, in spite of the ominous warning, which according to the story in Josephus he had received just before, as accepting the blasphemous adulation of the multitude, and as being stricken immediately by a mortal illness (Acts 20:20-23; Jos. Ant. xiv. viii. 2). “And something like this we see again and again in what the late Bishop Thirlwall called the ‘irony of history’—the cases in which men seem to have been elevated to the very summit of power only to heighten the dreadful precipice over which they immediately fell. He mentions the cases of Persia, which was on the verge of ruin when with lordly arrogance she dictated the peace of Antalcidas; of Boniface VIII., in the Jubilee of 1300, immediately preceding his deadly overthrow; and of Spain, under Philip II., struck down by the ruin of the Armada at the zenith of her wealth and pride. He might have added the instances of Ahab, Sennacherib [cf. Isaiah 10:12-19; Isaiah 10:33-34], Nebuchadnezzar, and Herod Antipas, of Alexander the Great, and of Napoleon” (Farrar, p. 198 f.). Additional Note on Nebuchadnezzar’s madnessThe malady from which Nebuchadnezzar is represented as suffering agrees, as Dr Pusey has pointed out (p. 425 ff.), “with the description of a rare sort of disease, called Lycanthropy, from one form of it, of which our earliest notice is in a Greek medical writer of the 4th cent. a.d., in which the sufferer retains his consciousness in other respects, but imagines himself to be changed into some animal, and acts, up to a certain point, in conformity with that persuasion.” Persons thus afflicted imagine themselves for instance to be dogs, wolves, lions, cats, cocks, or other animals, and cry or otherwise behave themselves in the manner of these animals. Marcellus (4 cent. a.d.) says, “They who are seized by the kynanthropic or lykanthropic disease, in the month of February go forth by night, imitating in all things wolves or dogs, and until day especially live near tombs.” Galen mentions the case of one who crowed, and flapped his arms, imagining himself to be a cock; and many similar cases are on record in modern times.

Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise and extol and honor the King of heaven - Compare Daniel 2:47, and Daniel 4:1-3.

36, 37. Compare notes above.This chapter contains a picture of royal pride brought low. This is also illustrated by the condition of Babylon to-day.