1The revelation which Habakkuk the prophet saw. 2Yahweh, how long will I cry, and you will not hear? I cry out to you “Violence!” and will you not save? 3Why do you show me iniquity, and look at perversity? For destruction and violence are before me. There is strife, and contention rises up. 4Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails; for the wicked surround the righteous; therefore justice comes out perverted.
5“Look among the nations, watch, and wonder marvelously; for I am working a work in your days which you will not believe though it is told you. 6For, behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation who march through the width of the earth, to possess dwelling places that are not theirs. 7They are feared and dreaded. Their judgment and their dignity proceed from themselves. 8Their horses also are swifter than leopards, and are more fierce than the evening wolves. Their horsemen press proudly on. Yes, their horsemen come from afar. They fly as an eagle that hurries to devour. 9All of them come for violence. Their hordes face forward. They gather prisoners like sand. 10Yes, they scoff at kings, and princes are a derision to them. They laugh at every stronghold, for they build up an earthen ramp and take it. 11Then they sweep by like the wind and go on. They are indeed guilty, whose strength is their god.”
12Aren’t you from everlasting, Yahweh my God, my Holy One? We will not die. Yahweh, you have appointed them for judgment. You, Rock, have established him to punish. 13You who have purer eyes than to see evil, and who cannot look on perversity, why do you tolerate those who deal treacherously and keep silent when the wicked swallows up the man who is more righteous than he, 14and make men like the fish of the sea, like the creeping things that have no ruler over them? 15He takes up all of them with the hook. He catches them in his net and gathers them in his dragnet. Therefore he rejoices and is glad. 16Therefore he sacrifices to his net and burns incense to his dragnet, because by them his life is luxurious and his food is good. 17Will he therefore continually empty his net, and kill the nations without mercy?
Daniel 4 claims that Nebuchadnezzar suffered seven years of a type of madness clinically called boanthropy, a rare psychological disorder in which a patient believes he is a cow or bull and behaves accordingly, such as grazing or acting like cattle. Nebuchadnezzar lived outdoors and ate grass like an ox, grew long hair “like eagle’s feathers,” grew long nails “like bird’s claws,” and lost his rational faculties and self-awareness. There is a striking parallel to Daniel’s account of Nebuchadnezzar’s madness in the cuneiform fragment BM (British Museum) 34113, in which the chronicler says that Nebuchadnezzar considered his life of no value and wept bitterly to Marduk [and] the gods. According to Daniel, this was divine punishment for his hubris in declaring that he, not God, had built the greatness of Babylon (Dan 4:30). By contrast, the Bible explicitly declared that Nebuchadnezzar’s extraordinary successes were a result of his being God’s chosen instrument (Jer 25:9; 27:6; 43:10; Dan 2:37-38; Hab 1:6).
Nebuchadnezzar conquered Tyre in 578 BC after a thirteen-year siege. Then, he had the dream of the tree in Daniel 4, and he suffered seven years of insanity. In 570 BC, he invaded Egypt and campaigned there through 568 BC. He died in 562 BC. Therefore, the dream of the tree and the seven years of madness can fit in only one place in Nebuchadnezzar's lifespan: from 577 to 571 BC. Daniel was about forty years old when he interpreted this dream.