The King’s Dream

31 “You, O king, were looking and behold, there was a single great statue; that statue, which was large and 1of extraordinary splendor, was standing in front of you, and its appearance was aawesome.

32 “The ahead of that statue was made of fine gold, its breast and its arms of silver, its belly and its thighs of bronze,

33 its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay.

34 “You 1continued looking until a astone was cut out bwithout hands, and it struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and ccrushed them.

35 “Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were crushed 1all at the same time and became alike chaff from the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away so that bnot a trace of them was found. But the stone that struck the statue became a great cmountain and filled the whole earth.

The Interpretation—Babylon the First Kingdom

36 “This was the dream; now we will tell aits interpretation before the king.

37 “You, O king, are the aking of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the 1kingdom, the bpower, the strength and the glory;

38 and wherever the sons of men dwell, or the abeasts of the field, or the birds of the sky, He has given them into your hand and has caused you to rule over them all. You are the head of gold.

Medo-Persia and Greece

39 “After you there will arise another kingdom inferior to you, then another third kingdom of bronze, which will rule over all the earth.

Rome

40 “Then there will be a afourth kingdom as strong as iron; inasmuch as iron crushes and shatters all things, so, like iron that breaks in pieces, it will crush and break all these in pieces.

41 “In that you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter’s clay and partly of iron, it will be a divided kingdom; but it will have in it the toughness of iron, inasmuch as you saw the iron mixed with 1common clay.

42 “As the toes of the feet were partly of iron and partly of pottery, so some of the kingdom will be strong and part of it will be brittle.

43 “And in that you saw the iron mixed with 1common clay, they will combine with one another 2in the seed of men; but they will not adhere to one another, even as iron does not combine with pottery.

The Divine Kingdom

44 “In the days of those kings the aGod of heaven will bset up a ckingdom which will never be destroyed, and that kingdom will not be 1left for another people; it will dcrush and put an end to all these kingdoms, but it will itself endure forever.

45 “Inasmuch as you saw that a astone was cut out of the mountain without hands and that it crushed the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold, the bgreat God has made known to the king what cwill take place 1in the future; so the dream is true and its interpretation is trustworthy.”