The Dream of the Statue

³¹As you, O king, were watching, a great statue appeared. A great and dazzling statue stood before you, and its form was awesome. ³²The head of the statue was pure gold, its chest and arms were silver, its belly and thighs were bronze, ³³its legs were iron, and its feet were part iron and part clay. ³⁴As you watched, a stone was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay, and crushed them. ³⁵Then the iron, clay, bronze, silver, and gold were shattered and became like chaff on the threshing floor in summer. The wind carried them away, and not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that had struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. ³⁶This was the dream; now we will tell the king its interpretation. ³⁷You, O king, are the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given sovereignty, power, strength, and glory. ³⁸Wherever the sons of men or beasts of the field or birds of the air dwell, He has given them into your hand and has made you ruler over them all. You are that head of gold. ³⁹But after you, there will arise another kingdom, inferior to yours. Next, a third kingdom, one of bronze, will rule the whole earth. ⁴⁰Finally, there will be a fourth kingdom as strong as iron; for iron shatters and crushes all things, and like iron that crushes all things, it will shatter and crush all the others. ⁴¹And just as you saw that the feet and toes were made partly of fired clay and partly of iron, so this will be a divided kingdom, yet some of the strength of iron will be in it—just as you saw the iron mixed with clay. ⁴²And as the toes of the feet were partly iron and partly clay, so this kingdom will be partly strong and partly brittle. ⁴³As you saw the iron mixed with clay, so the peoples will mix with one another but will not hold together any more than iron mixes with clay. ⁴⁴In the days of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will shatter all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, but will itself stand forever. ⁴⁵And just as you saw a stone being cut out of the mountain without human hands, and it shattered the iron, bronze, clay, silver, and gold, so the great God has told the king what will happen in the future. The dream is true, and its interpretation is trustworthy.”