What Does Daniel 4:16 Mean?
Let his heart be changed from a human heart, and let a beast's heart be given to him, and let seven seasons pass over him.
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
Let his heart be changed from man’s, and let a beast’s heart be given unto him; and let seven times pass over him.THE KEY
The verse’s shock is that the human heart, the inner faculty of thought, is changed into a beast’s, and that altered condition has a measured span.
THE MEANING
This verse names a frightening possibility: a person’s inner orientation can be radically altered, changing how life is perceived and lived. The change reaches the heart itself, and the seven times mark a defined span for that condition.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a person’s inner nature is fixed and cannot be radically altered.
THE ROOT
יְשַׁנּוֹן
yeshannun
GROWS FROM
שׁנא
sh-n-ʾ
To change or alter.
“changed” in this verse is yeshannun. The same Aramaic root describes changing times and seasons elsewhere in Daniel. Here that change reaches a person’s heart, joining the alteration of time with the alteration of inner nature.
ALSO GROWS
mehashne: Changes.
מְהַשְׁנֵא
This form describes changing times and seasons, showing that the root reaches both the passage of time and the state of a person.
lehashnayah: To change.
לְהַשְׁנָיָה
This form names the act of changing times and laws, echoing the verse’s use of the same root for a change reaching the heart.
לְבַב
lebab
GROWS FROM
לבב
l-b-b
The heart or inner person, including thought and understanding.
The Aramaic word for heart can also refer to the mind or understanding, so the verse describes more than an emotional shift. The same word names both the human heart and the beast’s heart: what changes is the nature of the inner life.
ALSO GROWS
libba: Heart or mind in Aramaic.
לִבָּא
This related form keeps thought and inner orientation within the meaning of heart.
lev: Heart or inner mind in Hebrew.
לֵב
This Hebrew branch likewise gathers feeling and thought into one inner center.
THE PATTERN
When the heart of understanding is removed or restored, a person’s lived condition changes with it.
He carries away the heart of the heads of the people of the earth, and makes them wander in a wilderness where there is no way.Yet a person who carries weight does not lodge; he is made like the beasts, and falls silent.And they came to Jesus and saw the one held by a demon, the one who had the Legion, sitting and clothed and sound in his mind. And they were afraid.THE THREAD
And he changes the times and the seasons. He removes kings and raises up kings. He gives wisdom to the wise, and knowledge to those who know understanding.Daniel 2:21 uses the same Aramaic root שׁנא (shena, change) as “be changed” here. There, times are changed; here, the human heart is, the shared root joins changes in time and changes in inner nature.
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