Daniel 4 Devotional

Humbled and Restored

“Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and exalt and glorify the King of heaven, for all His works are true and all His ways are just. And He is able to humble those who walk in pride.”Daniel 4:37 (BSB)

In a testimony sent to every nation, Nebuchadnezzar tells how he dreamed of a great tree cut down to a stump, and how Daniel said the tree was the king himself. He would be driven out to live like an animal until he acknowledged that the Most High rules over human kingdoms (4:20-25). A year later, walking on his palace roof, the king admires Babylon as the work of his own power and for his own glory (4:29-30). Before the words are finished, the sentence falls (4:31-33).

Yet the stump was left in the ground, and that detail is mercy (4:26). When the king lifts his eyes to heaven, his sanity returns, and his first act is praise for the God whose dominion never ends (4:34). His last words in the chapter confess that God is able to humble the proud (4:37). Peter makes the same point: God sets himself against pride and gives his grace to the humble (1 Peter 5:5). Humility is not humiliation. It is looking up and seeing who really rules.

To think about: Where are you tempted to take credit for what God has given, and what would looking up to him look like there?