Daniel 4:1

Unto all people. The narrative of events in chapter 4 is recorded in the form of a royal proclamation. Because they cannot find parallels to such publicly announced conversions, modern scholars declare such an edict historically absurd. But arguments from silence are never conclusive. On the other hand, royal conversion to a new religion or god is attested elsewhere. For example, King Amenhotep IV of Egypt forsook the polytheistic religion of his ancestors and of the nation and made strong efforts to introduce a new monotheistic religion into the realm. He built a new capital, changed his own name, closed the old temples, denounced the old gods, erected new temples to his god, and did everything in his power to promote the new religion.

Furthermore, little is known of Nebuchadnezzar’s history from sources outside of the Bible. Hence it is impossible to verify all the events of the king’s reign from contemporary source material. In fact, there are no contemporary non-Biblical sources for Nebuchadnezzar’s destruction of Jerusalem, or even for his long campaign against Tyre, though the historicity of these events is not disputed. It is therefore not strange to find no reference in Babylonian records to the king’s mental illness. Such records naturally omit items dealing with the misfortunes of a national hero. The change in this chapter from the first to the third person and back again to the first person (see vs. 2-27; cf. vs. 28-33; 34-37) has been explained by assuming either that Daniel wrote the edict upon the king’s command or that as Nebuchadnezzar’s chief counselor Daniel added certain portions to the edict written by the king himself. The edict reflected the king’s feelings when his full mental powers had been restored. “The once proud monarch had become a humble child of God” (PK 521; cf. EGW, Supplementary Material, on Dan. 4:37).

Peace be multiplied. The introduction to the proclamation contains an expression of good wishes. The edicts later promulgated by Persian kings were similar in form (see Ezra 4:17; 7:12). A typical formula in the Aramaic Elephantine letters of the 5th century b.c. is “The health of — may the God of Heaven seek.”