house of his god.” That is no incidental or irrelevant beginning. On the contrary, it is the theme of the book and the key to everything that follows. As the story will show, Nebuchadnezzar was an exceedingly arrogant man, and the conquests he made were understood by him to be proof of his superiority (or the superiority of his gods, which he did not always clearly distinguish from himself) to all others. Jews boasted that their God, Jehovah, was all-powerful. Nebuchadnezzar believed that he was