What Does Daniel 2:25 Mean?
Then Arioch brought Daniel in before the king in haste, and said to him, I have found a man of the exiles of Judah who will make known to the king the interpretation.
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
Then Arioch brought in Daniel before the king in haste, and said thus unto him, I have found a man of the captives of Judah, that will make known unto the king the interpretation.THE KEY
The one introduced as a captive is the one who can make what the king cannot understand knowable.
THE MEANING
When urgency presses for an answer, this verse locates the needed understanding in the person named as a captive. He is the one through whom hidden meaning becomes knowable to the king.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a person’s captive status tells the whole truth of what they can carry: here, the captive is named as the one who can disclose the interpretation.
THE ROOT
יְהוֹדַע
yehodaʿ
GROWS FROM
ידע
The Aramaic root ידע (yadaʿ) means “know”; in this causative form, it means “cause to know” or “make known.”
“make known” in this verse is yehodaʿ. The verse’s word for making something known grows from the same root as knowing. The interpretation moves from what is hidden into another person’s awareness; revelation is the root’s knowing made shared.
ALSO GROWS
yedaʿ: To know or recognize in Aramaic.
יְדַע
This base form names the act that the verse’s causative form brings about: the king comes to know what he could not interpret.
mehodaʿ: Making known in Aramaic.
מְהוֹדַע
The same root and causative pattern appear in Daniel 2:28, where what God reveals is made known to the king.
hodiʿa: To inform or make known in Hebrew.
הוֹדִיעַ
This Hebrew form preserves the same root letters and the same movement from knowing to bringing another into knowledge.
בְּהִתְבְּהָלָה
behitbehalah
GROWS FROM
בהל
The Hebrew and Aramaic root בהל (bahal) carries alarm, agitation, and hurried movement.
The word translated “in haste” carries agitation as well as speed. Arioch’s alarm frames the moment, but the answer comes through knowing, not through the urgency itself.
ALSO GROWS
bahal: To be alarmed, dismayed, or hurried.
בָּהַל
The base verb shows the agitation carried by Arioch’s hurried entrance.
behalah: Alarm, panic, or sudden dismay.
בֶּהָלָה
This noun shares the root consonants and makes clear that the haste can carry fear, not just quick movement.
nibhal: To become alarmed or hasten.
נִבְהַל
This form links a person’s inner alarm with outward haste, echoing how the verse stages the search for an answer.
THE PATTERN
What exceeds human understanding becomes known through revelation, even when the person carrying it is presented as powerless.
But there is a God in heaven who uncovers hidden things, and makes known to the king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days. Your dream, and the visions of your head upon your bed, are these.And they said to him, We have dreamed a dream, and there is no one to loose it. And Joseph said to them, Do not loosings belong to God? Tell me them, I pray you.But God unveiled them to us through his breath, for the breath searches all things, even the depths of God.THE THREAD
But there is a God in heaven who uncovers hidden things, and makes known to the king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days. Your dream, and the visions of your head upon your bed, are these.The king is told Daniel will make the interpretation known; the next verse names God as the source of that knowing. The Aramaic root ידע (yadaʿ, “know”) returns in “maketh known,” opening the human disclosure as what has first been revealed from above.
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