Daniel 2 – The identity of the 4 kingdoms

Nebuchadnezzar has a dream (v.31-35):

31 “Your Majesty, as you were watching, suddenly a colossal statue appeared. That statue, tall and dazzling, was standing in front of you, and its appearance was terrifying. 32 The head of the statue was pure gold, its chest and arms were silver, its stomach and thighs were bronze, 33 its legs were iron, and its feet were partly iron and partly fired clay. 34 As you were watching, a stone broke off without a hand touching it, struck the statue on its feet of iron and fired clay, and crushed them. 35 Then the iron, the fired clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were shattered and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors. The wind carried them away, and not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.

Daniel provides the interpretation (v26-45):

36 “This was the dream; now we will tell the king its interpretation. 37 Your Majesty, you are king of kings. The God of the heavens has given you sovereignty, power, strength, and glory. 38 Wherever people live—or wild animals, or birds of the sky—he has handed them over to you and made you ruler over them all. You are the head of gold.

39 “After you, there will arise another kingdom, inferior to yours, and then another, a third kingdom, of bronze, which will rule the whole earth. 40 A fourth kingdom will be as strong as iron; for iron crushes and shatters everything, and like iron that smashes, it will crush and smash all the others. 41 You saw the feet and toes, partly of a potter’s fired clay and partly of iron—it will be a divided kingdom, though some of the strength of iron will be in it. You saw the iron mixed with clay, 42 and that the toes of the feet were partly iron and partly fired clay—part of the kingdom will be strong, and part will be brittle. 43 You saw the iron mixed with clay—the peoples will mix with one another but will not hold together, just as iron does not mix with fired clay.

44 “In the days of those kings, the God of the heavens will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, and this kingdom will not be left to another people. It will crush all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, but will itself endure forever. 45 You saw a stone break off from the mountain without a hand touching it, and it crushed the iron, bronze, fired clay, silver, and gold. The great God has told the king what will happen in the future. The dream is certain, and its interpretation reliable.”

Head of God

We know from the prophetic interpretation supplied by Daniel that Nebuchadnezzar is the head of gold: “You are the head of gold.“

Chest and Arms of Silver

It is reasonably certain that from Daniel 5:28 that the next kingdom is the Medes and Persians: “your kingdom has been divided and given over to the Medes and Persians.” But, is it possible to understand this as the names of the next two kingdoms, rather than a single kingdom of Daniel 2?

Darius the Mede became king (Daniel 5:28), and later Cyrus the Persian (Daniel 1:21; 6:28). This is how the change happened: After his father’s death, Cyrus inherited the Persian throne at Pasargadae, which was a vassal of Astyages, the last king of the Median Empire (Darius was a sub-king). Astyages was the grandfather of Cyrus (via his mother, Mandane of Media1 2); Astyages attacked Cyrus, but was defeated by him.3 4 Cyrus spared his grandfather’s life. This makes sense, that despite the the Median Empire being a wholly different empire to the Persians, that the prophecy mentions them as though they are the same thing because Cyrus was both the rightful heir of the Median Empire and the King of the Persian Empire. Thus we can be almost certain that the Mede/Persian kingdoms should be considered a single kingdom. If we wanted to use the imagery of the statue, we can reason that the two arms represent Media and Persia united into one at the chest.

Stomach and Thighs of Bronze

The third kingdom is almost certain to be the Grecian kingdom for two main reasons:

  1. it ruled a far larger territory than all the previous kingdoms, and is distinguished in verse 39 as ruling the whole earth.
  2. Alexander the Great defeated Darius III and became King of the Persian Empire.5

After subduing all of the Persian Empire, Alexander’s army marched east and got as far as India before turning back home to Macedon (home). But he never made it home. At just 32 years old, Alexander died in Persia in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar II in Babylon from a sudden and mysterious illness. 

The Iron Kingdom

Daniel 2 describes the Iron kingdom as strong, and smashing everything; it will be a divided kingdom and in time it will be mixed with clay before it is smashed by the uncut stone.

40 A fourth kingdom will be as strong as iron; for iron crushes and shatters everything, and like iron that smashes, it will crush and smash all the others. 41 You saw the feet and toes, partly of a potter’s fired clay and partly of iron—it will be a divided kingdom, though some of the strength of iron will be in it. You saw the iron mixed with clay, 42 and that the toes of the feet were partly iron and partly fired clay—part of the kingdom will be strong, and part will be brittle. 43You saw the iron mixed with clay—the peoples will mix with one another but will not hold together, just as iron does not mix with fired clay.

Within several decades after Alexander the Great’s death, four of his generals divided up the empire after an extraordinarily complex story jockeying for power (see the Partition of Babylon and Wars of the Diadochi). In the end, there was the 4 kingdoms of Ptolemic Egypt, the Seleucid Empire in the east, the Kingdom of Pergamon in Asia Minor, and Macedon. These were indisputably Hellenistic (Greek speaking + Greek culture) and can reasonably be viewed as an extension of the Greek kingdom. If we keep with the statue narrative, the division was largely unseen and cosmetic to everyday life (the division of the thighs being unseen).

So the question is whether this is the divided Iron kingdom that smashes everything else. It was certainly divided but mostly along lines of loyalty rather than anything else. However, this was never a unified kingdom right from the time of Alexander’s death. It’s smashing days were over: the Greek Empire ceased expansion immediately on the death of Alexander. As a group they did not smash any other kingdoms (except each other occasionally). While there was division, the smallest division is 4 empires (probably corresponding to the 4 wings and heads of the leopard of Daniel 7), which is probably not the best analogy to legs.

Since the obvious implication if the break up of the Greek Empire is the Iron Kingdom, we must consider what happens to this kingdom: it is smashed by the stone cut without human hands. Firstly, if it is the iron kingdom, that is defeated by the stone (the church), it must be explained how the Roman Empire took about 200 years to defeat it, and that was still a good hundred years before the start of the church. Then, if the church is the stone, how did the stone destroy the Iron kingdom that ceased to exist 100 years earlier? It is difficult to reconcile the idea that the Roman Empire is the brittle clay when compared to the collapsed Greek Empire, nor can we consider the Roman Empire the stone of Christ.

I think the evidence weighs correctly to view the remnants of the Greek Empire as the Greek Empire and not a separate Empire (certainly we don’t regard the Roman Empire in that manner) and consider the Roman Empire instead.

Before we continue, some have proposed that the Roman Empire is ethically and morally almost indistinguishable and should be considered as part of the Greek Empire, like the two thighs. They propose that Islam is the Iron kingdom6. Firstly, this would automatically exclude the church from being the stone, the stone doesn’t precede the iron kingdom. Not necessarily a fatal view to the theory, but certainly a controversial one. Secondly, this wouldn’t remove the challenge for the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox church as being the extension and embodiment of the Roman Empire being the Bronze stomach that is also destroyed. Nevertheless, we may revisit this idea at a later date.

The church has historically taught that the Roman Empire is the Iron Kingdom. Irenaeus7 John Calvin, Gregory the Great II and Hippolytus and many others taught the Iron Kingdom was the Roman Empire.

UNlike the Greek Empire which permitted

Gregory the Great II and Hippolytus both taught that the iron kingdom would descend into democracies. Matthew Henry and Calvin also argued this is the correct understanding of the clay.

Since the church didn’t arise for another

Haydock

https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf05.iv.v.xiii.html

  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandane_of_Media ↩︎
  2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrus_the_Great ↩︎
  3. Matthews, Roger; Nashli, Hassan Fazeli (2022-06-30). The Archaeology of Iran from the Palaeolithic to the Achaemenid Empire. ↩︎
  4. Briant, Pierre (2002). From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire. Eisenbrauns. pp. 1–1196. ↩︎
  5. As Benson’s commentary also says: https://biblehub.com/commentaries/benson/daniel/2.htm ↩︎
  6. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/palestine-under-persian-rule/#:~:text=In%20538%20B.C.E.%2C%20Cyrus%20decreed,of%20bureaucracy%20came%20into%20power. ↩︎
  7. https://www.history.com/news/alexander-the-great-defeat-persian-empire ↩︎
  8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiochus_II_Theos ↩︎
  9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berenice_Syra ↩︎
  10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemy_II_Philadelphus ↩︎
  11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemy_V_Epiphanes ↩︎
  12. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleopatra_I_Syra ↩︎
  13. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiochus_III_the_Great ↩︎
  14. https://www.britannica.com/event/Siege-of-Jerusalem-70 ↩︎
  15. https://biblehub.com/commentaries/barnes/daniel/2.htm ↩︎
  16. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seleucid_Empire ↩︎
  17. Irenaeus, Against Heresies: Book V, Chapter 26, – https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.ix.vii.xxvii.html
    In arguing that this 4th Iron kingdom is the Roman Empire he argues still that the stone is Christ’s first advent and kingdom, albeit not explicitly. ↩︎
  18. This is proposed by Gregory the Great (II) in Ephraim: The “Demonstrations” of Aphrahat V: of Wars
    This is the kingdom of the children of Shem, who are the children of Esau, which is strong as iron. And he said:—As iron breaks and subdueth everything, so also the fourth kingdom shall break and bruise everything. And he explained with reference to the feet and toes, that part of them was of iron and part of them of potter’s clay. For he said:—Thus they shall be mingled with the seed of man, and they shall not cleave one to another, as iron cannot be mixed with clay. – https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf213.iii.ix.iv.html
    Otherwise known as Pope Gregory II (b. AD.669 d. AD.731) he was already dealing with Islam. He reasoned that they were the children of Esau because of Nimrod was a democracy without a king. Gregory completely ignores the Roman Empire still holding that the Stomach and Thighs are the Greeks. ↩︎

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