For the Chief Musician; set to “The Doe of the Morning.” A Psalm by David.
1My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from helping me, and from the words of my groaning?
2My God, I cry in the daytime, but you don’t answer;
in the night season, and am not silent.
3But you are holy,
you who inhabit the praises of Israel.
4Our fathers trusted in you.
They trusted, and you delivered them.
5They cried to you, and were delivered.
They trusted in you, and were not disappointed.
6But I am a worm, and no man;
a reproach of men, and despised by the people.
7All those who see me mock me.
They insult me with their lips. They shake their heads, saying,
8“He trusts in Yahweh.
Let him deliver him.
Let him rescue him, since he delights in him.”
9But you brought me out of the womb.
You made me trust while at my mother’s breasts.
10I was thrown on you from my mother’s womb.
You are my God since my mother bore me.
11Don’t be far from me, for trouble is near.
For there is no one to help.
12Many bulls have surrounded me.
Strong bulls of Bashan have encircled me.
13They open their mouths wide against me,
lions tearing prey and roaring.
14I am poured out like water.
All my bones are out of joint.
My heart is like wax.
It is melted within me.
15My strength is dried up like a potsherd.
My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.
You have brought me into the dust of death.
16For dogs have surrounded me.
A company of evildoers have enclosed me.
They have pierced my hands and feet.
17I can count all of my bones.
They look and stare at me.
18They divide my garments among them.
They cast lots for my clothing.
19But don’t be far off, Yahweh.
You are my help. Hurry to help me!
20Deliver my soul from the sword,
my precious life from the power of the dog.
21Save me from the lion’s mouth!
Yes, you have rescued me from the horns of the wild oxen.
22I will declare your name to my brothers.
Among the assembly, I will praise you.
23You who fear Yahweh, praise him!
All you descendants of Jacob, glorify him!
Stand in awe of him, all you descendants of Israel!
24For he has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted,
neither has he hidden his face from him;
but when he cried to him, he heard.
25My praise of you comes in the great assembly.
I will pay my vows before those who fear him.
26The humble shall eat and be satisfied.
They shall praise Yahweh who seek after him.
Let your hearts live forever.
27All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to Yahweh.
All the relatives of the nations shall worship before you.
28For the kingdom is Yahweh’s.
He is the ruler over the nations.
29All the rich ones of the earth shall eat and worship.
All those who go down to the dust shall bow before him,
even he who can’t keep his soul alive.
30Posterity shall serve him.
Future generations shall be told about the Lord.
31They shall come and shall declare his righteousness to a people that shall be born,
for he has done it.
Nebuchadnezzar referred to the fourth person as an “angel.” This fourth person in the furnace may have been a Christophany or a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ.
Psalms 22 says the fathers of the Jews trusted in God and were delivered; Psalms 84 and Jeremiah 17 proclaim that blessed is the man who trusts in God.
Nebuchadnezzar, like Darius I after him (in Ezra 6), issued a decree of dreadful punishments for those who dared to interfere with honoring Yahweh.
Nowhere does Daniel say what the statue's image represents. It may have been of Nebuchadnezzar, Marduk, Babylon’s chief god, or merely an obelisk intended, as was the statue that Paul saw in First Century Athens, to honor an unknown god.
If the statue depicted a human, it must have been highly stylized and elongated because it was 60 x 6 cubits. Since a cubit is 18 inches, that would be 90 feet high by nine feet wide (in diameter). It was ten times taller than it was wide; it was about the height of a nine-story building or 15 times taller than a 6-foot man.
If the basic design of the statue were a solid cylinder, it would have contained 12.5 million kilograms of gold, with a valuation in 2025 of $825 billion. If the basic design of the statue were a cone, it would have contained 4.2 million kilograms of gold, with a valuation in 2025 of $373 billion. Even if the statue were only gold plated, while we cannot know the thickness of the plating, obviously the value of the gold would have been many millions or even billions of today’s dollars.
Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Chapter 2 thus accurately depicted Babylon as an Empire of Gold. Such a concentration of wealth was unknown in the Persian, Greek, and Roman Empires, even if the total wealth of those empires may have been greater.
One wonders what Nebuchadnezzar did with the statue after this event. Perhaps he left it standing as a witness to the miracle. Or perhaps, before the fiery furnace cooled, he melted it down to gold bars. This seems more likely. An absolute despot probably would not have relished people passing by the statue and snickering at the king’s vast and expensive idol that failed to serve as a focus of universal worship (Ps 22: 4-5; 84:12; Jer 17:7; Ezra 6:11).