Daniel 2:31–45

THE DREAM’S INTERPRETATION

³¹“Your Majesty, as you were watching, suddenly a colossal statue appeared. That statue, tall and dazzling, was standing in front of you, and its appearance was terrifying. ³²The head of the statue was pure gold, its chest and arms were silver, its stomach and thighs were bronze, ³³its legs were iron, and its feet were partly iron and partly fired clay. ³⁴As you were watching, a stone broke off without a hand touching it,^Ca struck the statue^b on its feet of iron and fired clay, and crushed them.^{c 35}Then the iron, the fired clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were shattered and became like chaff^d from the summer threshing floors. The wind carried them away, and not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled^e the whole earth.

³⁶“This was the dream; now we will tell the king its interpretation. ³⁷Your Majesty, you are king of kings.^f The God of the heavens has given you sovereignty, power,^g strength, and glory. ³⁸Wherever people live—or wild animals, or birds of the sky—he has handed them over to you and made you ruler over them all.^h You are the head of gold.

³⁹“After you, there will arise another kingdom, inferior to yours, and then another, a third kingdom, of bronze, which will rule the whole earth.^{i 40}A fourth kingdom will be as strong as iron; for iron crushes and shatters everything, and like iron that smashes, it will crush and smash all the others.^{Aj 41}You saw the feet and toes, partly of a potter’s fired clay and partly of iron—it will be a divided kingdom, though some of the strength of iron will be in it. You saw the iron mixed with clay, ⁴²and that the toes of the feet were partly iron and partly fired clay—part of the kingdom will be strong, and part will be brittle. ⁴³You saw the iron mixed with clay—the peoples will mix with one another^B but will not hold together, just as iron does not mix with fired clay.

⁴⁴“In the days of those kings, the God of the heavens will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed,^k and this kingdom will not be left to another people. It will crush all these kingdoms^l and bring them to an end, but will itself endure forever. ⁴⁵You saw a stone^m break off from the mountain without a hand touching it,^Cn and it crushed the iron, bronze, fired clay, silver, and gold. The great God has told the king what will happen in the future.^o The dream is certain, and its interpretation reliable.”