Daniel 2:31–45

³¹“Your Majesty looked, and there before you stood a large statue—an enormous, dazzling statue,^l awesome^m in appearance. ³²The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, ³³its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay. ³⁴While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands.ⁿ It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed^o them.^{p 35}Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were all broken to pieces and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer. The wind swept them away^q without leaving a trace. But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain^r and filled the whole earth.^s

³⁶“This was the dream, and now we will interpret it to the king.^{t 37}Your Majesty, you are the king of kings.^u The God of heaven has given you dominion^v and power and might and glory; ³⁸in your hands he has placed all mankind and the beasts of the field and the birds in the sky. Wherever they live, he has made you ruler over them all.^w You are that head of gold.

³⁹“After you, another kingdom will arise, inferior to yours. Next, a third kingdom, one of bronze, will rule over the whole earth.^{x 40}Finally, there will be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron—for iron breaks and smashes everything—and as iron breaks things to pieces, so it will crush and break all the others.^{y 41}Just as you saw that the feet and toes were partly of baked clay and partly of iron, so this will be a divided kingdom; yet it will have some of the strength of iron in it, even as you saw iron mixed with clay. ⁴²As the toes were partly iron and partly clay, so this kingdom will be partly strong and partly brittle. ⁴³And just as you saw the iron mixed with baked clay, so the people will be a mixture and will not remain united, any more than iron mixes with clay.

⁴⁴“In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush^z all those kingdoms^a and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever.^{b 45}This is the meaning of the vision of the rock^c cut out of a mountain, but not by human hands^d—a rock that broke the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold to pieces.

“The great God has shown the king what will take place in the future.^e The dream is true^f and its interpretation is trustworthy.”