To what length of days, he thought, might this majestic tree not attain! and how would the earth be able to hold it if it should go on increasing in size?
But suddenly there was a fluttering in the air; and down from the bright heavens came "a watcher and an holy one," who was terrible in his strength, and whose face shone like the sun. Judgment, and not mercy, was written upon his forehead. And oh, his voice! How dreadful it sounded to the startled king, who would gladly have closed his ears to it.
"Hew down the tree," the Angel cried, with a voice of thunder, his eyes, which were like balls of fire, flashing with righteous indignation. "Hew down the tree, and cut off his branches; shake off his leaves, and scatter his fruit. Warn the beasts to get from under it, lest they be crushed with its weight. And bid the little birds leave its branches. But do not destroy the tree. Leave the stump of his roots in the earth. Let it be wet with the dew of heaven; and let his portion be with the beasts in the grass of the earth. 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."
What a strange dream for a king to have! And how troubled his countenance was when he rose from his bed! His eyes moved restlessly from one object to another, telling of a mind ill at ease. His limbs shook; and he seemed many years older than on the previous day. His grandly-arrayed lords came round him as before, with pleasant smiles and flattering speeches. But he could heed none of them. Whatever he did, he could not give his mind to affairs of state. Try to control them as he would, his thoughts would wander back to the towering majestic tree, to its great thick trunk, its leafy branches, its rich profusion of delicious fruit affording sustenance to all the world, and to that bright but awful being who had come from heaven and pronounced over the tree that dread sentence.
What if the tree should mean himself? Who in all the wide world but himself could be compared to it for strength and majesty? Who but himself had attained to such power and magnificence? And oh! what if all should be taken away from him? What if the widely-spreading tree should indeed be cut down, its glory and its beauty and its strength alike gone?
How he wished he knew the meaning of his dream! And how anxiously he consulted the wise men who were summoned to his presence! Magicians, astrologers, Chaldæans, and soothsayers, all the wise men of Babylon came to his palace to hear his dream, and to try to tell the meaning of it.
But the effort was in vain. The dream was from heaven, and not all the vaunted wisdom of this world could interpret it. The meaning of it could only be told by one inspired by the Spirit of God who had sent it.
Then Daniel, the Jewish captive, to whom Nebuchadnezzar had given the name of Belteshazzar, or a layer up of things in secret, was brought. Not long before he had not only told the king the meaning of a most mysterious dream that he had had, but he had also recalled the dream itself, which Nebuchadnezzar had forgotten. And as an interpreter of dreams and the wisest of mortals, his fame had spread far and wide; and Nebuchadnezzar could see that the Jewish prophet had a wisdom far surpassing that of his wisest and most skilled magicians.
So the strange dream of the mighty tree cut down was told to the Jewish captive, and the usually calm face of the prophet grew dark and troubled as that of the king.
"Do not be distressed by the dream or its interpretation, Belteshazzar," Nebuchadnezzar said in his gentlest tones; for he saw that the dream meant something bad, and that Daniel did not like to tell him. "Show me the interpretation."