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Ezekiel and Daniel: Babylonian Crisis

  1. Lesson One
    Ezekiel's Prophetic Word (Ezekiel 1–24)
    19 Activities
    |
    2 Assessments
  2. Lesson Two
    Ezekiel: Israel's Shame and Restoration (Ezekiel 25–39)
    22 Activities
    |
    1 Assessment
  3. Lesson Three
    Ezekiel's Distinctive Message (Ezekiel 40–48)
    24 Activities
    |
    2 Assessments
  4. Lesson Four
    Daniel: Dreams and Prophecies (Daniel 1–3, 9–12)
    18 Activities
    |
    1 Assessment
  5. Lesson Five
    Daniel: Kings and Kingdoms (Daniel 4–8)
    18 Activities
  6. Course Wrap-Up
    Course Completion
    1 Activity
    |
    1 Assessment

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The portrait Daniel offers of Nebuchadnezzar is at times unflattering, to put it mildly. The strange and absurd scene of the great king acting like a farm animal has been referenced by many artists as a kind of archetypal image for insanity.  

Immediately the word was fulfilled against Nebuchadnezzar. He was driven from among men and ate grass like an ox, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his hair grew as long as eagles’ feathers, and his nails were like birds’ claws. 
Daniel 4:33 ESV

In Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, an older woman uses the image in just this way,

He’s plumb crazy, s’I; it’s what I says in the fust place, it’s what I says in the middle, ‘n’ it’s what I says last ‘n’ all the time—the (man’s) crazy—crazy ‘s Nebokoodneezer, s’I.

William Shakespeare uses the image sarcastically in All’s Well That Ends Well. In a false moment of self-deprecation a clown says, 

I am no great Nebuchadnezzar, sir; I have not much skill in grass.

Other writers to use this image include John Keats, Herman Melville, Saul Bellow, Charlotte Bronte and Ralph Waldo Emerson. The angles that each of these writers take are all different, but Nebuchadnezzar is always the butt of the joke. This is one of those comical reminders that, however highly we might think of ourselves, God is sovereign over history. Much like Abimelech, who is remembered for the one thing he would’ve wanted people to forget (i.e., having his head crushed by a woman), this king of Babylon has a legacy opposite of the one he tried to build.

Source: William Shakespeare, The Works of William Shakespeare, 1855, p. 245; Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn, 2001, p. 252.