I saw in the visions of my head upon my bed, and, behold, a watcher and a holy one came down from heaven; He cried aloud, and said thus, Hew down the tree, and cut off his branches, shake off his leaves, and scatter his fruit: let the beasts get away from under it, and the fowls from his branches: (Dan 4:13-14)
Nebuchadnezzar has been having a very upbeat dream… until now. The tree is tall and productive. But suddenly an angel appears out of nowhere from the throne of God and loudly proclaims the destruction of the tree and the scattering of all its admirers. (The tree stump is behind his head in the picture.)
There is no talking it over, no negotiation, and no explanation. It's over! Even for a dream, this is tough. It seems that the hardest thing on earth for us members of the human race is to realize that God did not create us to be in charge of His program and to rob Him of His glory. Man wants to define himself in his own image and take charge of God's creation. There must come a day of reckoning for this bad thinking.
There are ranks of angels who are responsible for different jobs. They never sleep. They watch over their assigned tasks night and day. They protect and pronounce and pour out God's judgment at times. Just one of these created angels slew all the firstborn in Egypt (Ex 12:23). In David's day an angel brought the judgment of pestilence (2 Sam 24:16). One angel killed 185,000 Assyrian soldiers in one night. Then the angel of the LORD went forth, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and fourscore and five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses (Isa 37:36).
Shouldn't we shy away from trying to manage ourselves apart from God? David wrote of angels: Bless the LORD, ye his angels, that excel in strength, that do his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his word. Bless ye the LORD, all ye his hosts; ye ministers of his, that do his pleasure (Psa 103:20-21).
God also commissions angels to minister to His heirs of salvation. Are they [angels] not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation? (Heb 1:14) If you are a child of God, you may have had the help of an angel more times than you know. God carries out much of His powerful program through the unseen spirits of angels (1Ki 22:19-23).
Nebuchadnezzar both sees and hears the appointed angel in verse 14. This angel is no tissy-pristle product of a Hollywood movie. This is the real thing. He thunders a command to other unseen agents from the throne of God: Cut! Shake! Scatter! Not only so, but attention is given to changing the neuter pronoun: "it" to the personal pronoun: "his." In the first description of the tree we find Nebuchadnezzar's reference to the tree as "it." But the angel of judgment refers to "his branches—his leaves—his fruit." The angel made it clear to Nebuchadnezzar that it was speaking to him personally. His branches were cut off. His leaves were shaken off. His fruit was scattered.
It looks like Nebuchadnezzar's number is up like it someday will be up for his grandson Belshazzar who lost it all in one night and this same prophet Daniel will be called in to read the mysterious handwriting on the wall. But, it's not all over for Nebuchadnezzar. It is he who lived to tell his own story in this chapter and he is willing to tell it like it was.
As I searched various commentaries I found that other nations chose not to enter any of these events in their comments. Nebuchadnezzar, himself who had conquered everybody, was ignored in the subsequent histories of nations he had conquered. In fact, the Greeks are somewhat unreliable in reporting the minor events of other nations that do not interest them. Tradition has it that when Moses left Egypt in haste, his name was removed from public buildings so that no one would ever remember the name of Moses. Well, somehow word got out about Moses.
Men do strange things in trying to manage God. It also leaked out that a man named Nebuchadnezzar had lived and conquered and died. Russia censored from their history books in school that America sent many shiploads of food to save them from certain starvation following the Bolshevik revolution. So, that kind of thing is not hard to find in history.
Don't you just love Bible stories? I do. Have a good day
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