Daniel 2:37

King of kings. This same title is found in the inscription of the Persian king Ariaramnes, a contemporary of Nebuchadnezzar.

God of heaven hath given. In his inscriptions Nebuchadnezzar attributes his regal success to his god Marduk, but Daniel, in a kindly manner, corrects this mistaken idea.

He affirms that it is the God of heaven who has bestowed such power upon him.

A kingdom. The territory that Nebuchadnezzar ruled had had a long and checkered history and had been under the varied leadership of different peoples and kingdoms. According to Genesis, the city of Babylon was part of the kingdom founded by Nimrod, the great-grandson of Noah (Gen. 10:8-10). A number of city-states existed in the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates at a very early period. Later, some states were grouped together into several Sumerian kingdoms. Following the first period of Sumer’s domination came the kingdom of Akkad, with its great Semitic kings Sargon and Naram-Sin. However, these Semites were again replaced by various nations, such as the Guti, Elamites, and Sumerians. They in turn had to give way to the Semites who founded the Old Babylonian Empire, which flourished in the time of the later patriarchs. This Amorite Empire, of which Hammurabi was the most important king, came to include all of Mesopotamia and expanded into Syria, like the Akkadian Empire of Sargon. Later, Mesopotamia was taken over by Hurrians and Kassites, and Babylonia became less important than the powerful Hittite and Egyptian empires. Then in northern Mesopotamia arose another world power, the Assyrian Empire, which again united Mesopotamia and Western Asia to the Mediterranean. After a period of Assyrian domination Babylon became independent again under Chaldean rule, and took over once more the leadership of the world. Nabopolassar (626-605 B.C.) was the founder of what is termed the Chaldean, or Neo-Babylonian, Empire, which had its golden age in the days of King Nebuchadnezzar (605-562 B.C.), and lasted until Babylon fell to the Medes and Persians in 539 (see Vol. II, pp. 92-94; Vol. Ill, pp. 45-50).