duration may be very different. Seven is the “measure and signature of the history of the development of the kingdom of God, and of all the factors and phenomena significant for it” (Lämmert's “Revision of the biblical Symbolical Numbers” in the Jahrbb.f. deutsche Theol. ix. p. 11); or as Leyrer, in Herzog's Realencykl. xviii. p. 366, expresses himself, “the signature for all the actions of God, in judgment and in mercy, punishments, expiations, consecrations, blessings, connected with the economy of redemption, perfecting themselves in time.” Accordingly, “seven times” is the duration of the divine punishment which was decreed against Nebuchadnezzar for purposes connected with the history of redemption. Whether these times are to be understood as years, months, or weeks, is not said, and cannot at all be determined. The supposition that they were seven years “cannot well be adopted in opposition to the circumstance that Nebuchadnezzar was again restored to reason, a thing which very rarely occurs after so long a continuance of psychical disease” (J. B. Friedreich, Zur Bibel. Naturhist., anthrop. u. med. Fragmente, i. p. 316).
Verse 17
Dan 4:17 (Hebrew_Bible_4:14)
The divine messenger concludes his announcement with the words that the matter was unchangeably decreed, for this purpose, that men might be led to recognise the supremacy of the Most High over the kings of the earth. The first two passages have no verb, and thus the verb. substant. must be supplied. Accordingly we must not translate: by the decree of the watchers is the message, i.e., is it delivered (Kran.), nor: the decree is included in the fate, the unalterable will of Heaven (Häv.); but בdenotes the department within which the גּזרה lies, and is to be translated: “the message consists in, or rests on, the decree of the watchers.” גּזרה, the unchangeable decision, the decretum divinum, quod homini aut rebus humanis tanquam inevitabile impositum est (Buxtorf's Lex. talm. rabb. p. 419), the Fatum in which the Chaldeans believed. Regarding פּתגּם see under Dan 3:16. Here the fundamental meaning, the message, that which is to happen, can be maintained. The second member is synonymous, and affirms the same thing in another way. The word, the utterance of the holy ones, i.e., the watchers (see under Dan 4:13), is שׁאלתּא, the matter. The meaning lying in the etymon, request or question, is not here suitable, but only the derivative meaning, matter as the object of the request or inquiry. The thing meant is that which is decided regarding the tree, that it should be cut down, etc. This
