What Does Daniel 2:9 Mean?
But if you do not make known to me the dream, there is but one decree for you, for you have prepared lying and corrupt words to speak before me, until the time changes. Therefore tell me the dream, and I shall know that you can show me its 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
But if ye will not make known unto me the dream, there is but one decree for you: for ye have prepared lying and corrupt words to speak before me, till the time be changed: therefore tell me the dream, and I shall know that ye can shew me the interpretation thereof.THE KEY
The king makes the hidden dream itself the test: an interpretation counts only if the interpreter first discloses what was not told.
THE MEANING
This verse makes disclosure the test of a claim about hidden meaning: the dream must be made known before its interpretation can count as evidence. Yet the speaker calls the sages’ words deceit and holds one decree over them, so the demand for proof carries coercive power.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A confident interpretation by itself proves that someone knows what happened in secret.
THE ROOT
תְּהוֹדְעוּנַּנִי
tĕhôdĕʿunnannî
GROWS FROM
ידע
y-d-ʿ
To know or recognize; in its causative form, to make known.
The verse uses this one root twice: first as “make known,” then as “I shall know.” That pairing makes disclosure the test that turns hidden content into something the king can recognize, while the decree and accusation keep the test coercive.
ALSO GROWS
hôdaʿ: Make known; inform.
הוֹדַע
This causative form sends knowledge outward: one person causes another to know what was hidden.
yĕdaʿ: Know; recognize.
יְדַע
The king’s “I shall know” belongs to the same root, joining the act of disclosure to the recognition that follows.
THE PATTERN
A hidden matter becomes knowable through disclosure, and interpretation follows what is revealed.
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.For the Lord GOD does nothing, unless he uncovers his secret to his servants the prophets.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.“Maketh known” in Daniel 2:28 carries the same Aramaic ידע root as “make known” and “I shall know” here. The repeated root locates the disclosure of the hidden in the God who reveals secrets.
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