What Does Daniel 4:28 Mean?
All this came upon the king Nebuchadnezzar.
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
All this came upon the king Nebuchadnezzar.THE KEY
The Aramaic word translated “came” is also translated “reached”: the announced outcome has reached the king.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks to the moment when what seemed distant becomes lived reality. “All this” gathers the whole outcome into one arrival, and the king’s title does not keep it away.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Being powerful can keep an announced consequence from reaching me.
THE ROOT
מְטָא
mĕṭāʾ
GROWS FROM
מטא
To reach, arrive, come to.
In Daniel 4:11 and 4:22, this same Aramaic verb describes the tree’s height and the king’s greatness reaching heaven; here it says the outcome came upon him. English separates “reached” from “came,” while the Aramaic joins them in one image of arrival.
ALSO GROWS
mĕṭāʾ: Reached
מְטָא
In Daniel 4:11, the tree’s height reaches heaven; the same verb links reaching a destination with arrival.
mĕṭāʾ: Reached
מְטָא
In Daniel 4:22, the king’s greatness reaches heaven, just before the outcome reaches him.
מַלְכָּא
malkāʾ
GROWS FROM
מלך
To reign or rule.
The title “king” shares its root with words for kingdom and rule, so it carries the idea of sovereignty within it. Here, the outcome arrives upon the one whose title names his power to rule.
ALSO GROWS
malkûtāʾ: Kingdom, kingship
מַלְכוּתָא
In Daniel 4:31, this word names the kingdom that departs from the king.
mĕlaḵ: To reign, rule
מְלַךְ
This verbal form makes explicit the act of ruling carried within the title “king.”
THE PATTERN
What is announced has an appointed reach: it arrives as lived reality.
In that same hour the thing was fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar, and he was driven from men, and ate grass as oxen, and his body was dipped in the dew of heaven, until his hair had grown like eagles' feathers, and his nails like birds' claws.For the vision is yet for the appointed time, and at the end it will breathe and not lie. Though it lingers, wait for it. Because it will surely come, it will not stay behind.And Flourishing is she who leaned her full weight, for there will be a completion of what was spoken to her from beside the LORD.THE THREAD
It is you, O king, who has grown and become strong, for your greatness has grown and reaches to heaven, and your rule to the end of all the earth.The Aramaic verb translated “reacheth” here is the same root as “came” in the current verse. The king’s greatness reaches heaven, then the outcome reaches him.
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