Accordingly Daniel bids Arioch not to execute the magians, but to go and tell the king that he will reveal to him the interpretation of his dream.
Then, by an obvious verbal inconsistency in the story, Arioch is represented as going with haste to the king, with Daniel, and saying that he had found a captive Jew who would answer the king's demands. Arioch could never have claimed any such merit, seeing that Daniel had already given his promise to Nebuchadrezzar in person, and did not need to be described. The king formally puts to Daniel the question whether he could fulfil his pledge; and Daniel answers that, though none of the Khakhamîm, Ashshaphîm, Chartummîm, or Gazerîm[298] could tell the king his dream, yet there is a God in heaven—higher, it is implied, than either the genii or those whose dwelling is not with mortals—who reveals secrets, and has made known to the king what shall be in the latter days.[299]
The king, before he fell asleep, had been deeply pondering the issues of the future; and God, "the revealer of secrets,"[300] had revealed those issues to him, not because of any supreme wisdom possessed by Daniel, but simply that the interpretation might be made known.[301]
The king had seen[302] a huge gleaming, terrible colossus of many colours and of different metals, but otherwise not unlike the huge colossi which guarded the portals of his own palace. Its head was of fine gold; its torso of silver; its belly and thighs of brass; its legs of iron; its feet partly of iron and partly of clay.[303] But while he gazed upon it as it reared into the sunlight, as though in mute defiance and insolent security, its grim metallic glare, a mysterious and unforeseen fate fell upon it.[304] The fragment of a rock broke itself loose, not with hands, smote the image upon its feet of iron and clay, and broke them to pieces. It had now nothing left to stand upon, and instantly the hollow multiform monster collapsed into promiscuous ruins.[305] Its shattered fragments became like the chaff of the summer threshing-floor, and the wind swept them away;[306] but the rock, unhewn by any earthly hands, grew over the fragments into a mountain that filled the earth.
That was the haunting and portentous dream; and this was its interpretation:—
The head of gold was Nebuchadrezzar himself, the king of what Isaiah had called "the golden city"[307]—a King of kings, ruler over the beasts of the field, and the fowls of heaven, and the children of men.[308]
After him should come a second and an inferior kingdom, symbolised by the arms and heart of silver.
Then a third kingdom of brass.