Passage Viewer

In your vision, you saw a statue—very large, very bright, and frightening to look at.

Its head was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze,

its legs of iron, and its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay.

As you watched, a rock carved from a mountain—yet not by human hands—struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay, shattering them.

Suddenly, the iron, clay, bronze, silver, and gold all crumbled into pieces, as fine as chaff on a summer threshing floor. The wind swept them away, leaving no trace behind. But the rock that hit the statue grew into a great mountain covering the whole earth.

That was the dream; now here is the interpretation.

You, O king, are the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given dominion, strength, power, and glory,

and into whose hand he has placed humankind, the beasts of the field, and the birds of the air, making you ruler over them. You are that head of gold.

After you, another kingdom, weaker than yours, will rise. Then a third kingdom made of bronze will rule the whole world.

The last will be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron; and just as iron breaks and crushes everything else, so will it break and destroy all the others.

The partly-clay and partly-iron feet and toes mean it will be a divided kingdom; yet it will have some strength of iron, just as you saw iron mixed with clay.

And as the toes were partly iron and partly clay, the kingdom will be partly strong and partly weak.

Just as you saw iron mixed with baked clay, the people will be a mixture but will not stay united, any more than iron mixes with clay.

In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will establish a kingdom that will never be destroyed or handed over to another people. It will crush all these kingdoms and put an end to them, and it will last forever.

This is the meaning of your vision of a rock cut from a mountain—not by human hands; the rock that struck the statue and shattered the iron, bronze, clay, silver, and gold. The great God has shown the king what will happen in the future. The dream is true, and its interpretation is reliable.”