What Does Daniel 2:10 Mean?
The Chaldeans answered before the king and said, There is not a man upon the earth who can show the king's word, since no king, lord, or ruler has asked such things of any magician, astrologer, or Chaldean.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
The Chaldeans answered before the king, and said, There is not a man upon the earth that can shew the king’s matter: therefore there is no king, lord, nor ruler, that asked such things at any magician, or astrologer, or Chaldean.THE KEY
A king can demand the hidden word, but authority cannot manufacture access to it.
THE MEANING
This verse meets you where a demand outruns what human knowing can reach. Authority and expertise can request an answer, but they cannot make a hidden thing known by themselves.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that rank or expertise can force access to every hidden thing.
THE ROOT
מִלַּת
millat
GROWS FROM
מלל
m-l-l
To speak or utter; its word-family names speech and, by extension, a thing or matter.
The Aramaic word rendered “matter” belongs to the word and utterance family of מלל. The king demands that his hidden word be spoken back to him; “matter” can conceal that the task is to disclose what has not been uttered.
ALSO GROWS
millətā: Word, speech, utterance
מִלְּתָא
This sense keeps the spoken word visible beneath the king’s “matter.”
millat: Thing, affair, matter
מִלַּת
This form names the king’s matter here and the “thing” in Daniel 2:5, linking both to the same hidden content.
THE PATTERN
Human expertise reaches a limit at hidden knowledge; revelation supplies what no demand can produce.
The hidden things belong to the LORD our God, but the uncovered things belong to us and to our children for the ages, that we may do all the words of this instruction.He uncovers the deep and hidden things. He knows what is in the darkness, and the light rests with him.But God unveiled them to us through his breath, for the breath searches all things, even the depths of God.THE THREAD
The king answered and said to the Chaldeans, The word has gone from me. If you do not make known to me the dream, with its interpretation, you shall be cut in pieces, and your houses shall be made a dunghill.The “thing” in Daniel 2:5 and the king’s “matter” here use the same Aramaic word, מִלַּת (millat), “word” or “matter.” That shared word shows the demand reaching beyond interpretation: the hidden content itself must be made known.
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