2:1-3
Nebuchadnezzar had dreams. These troubled his mind. Given what comes later, it may be that he couldn’t remember what the dreams were, or at least not in detail. Maybe just having a hazy memory of the dream. Whatever the case he was greatly troubled by the dream. So he summoned the “magicians, enchanters, sorcerers and astrologers. These were the people in the kingdom who should have been able to help the king out in this matter. These sorts of things were, of course, forbidden in the Levitical Law (Deut 18:9-12).
2:4-6
“The astrologers answered the king”. It is at this point that the text is written in Aramaic until the end of chapter 7, where it reverts back to Hebrew. It may be because these chapters are relevant to the Gentile world, whereas from chapter 8 onwards they are more directly relevant to Israel. Anyway, the astrologers seem very sure of themselves and their ability to give the king the answer he wants. However, things are not quite as they seem. First, the king makes it clear that there is a severe penalty to be paid if they do not interpret his dream! On the other hand, if they do interpret the dream there is a great reward. There is also a sting in the tail, the king says “tell me the dream”. So they not only have to interpret the dream, but also tell him what it was! This is clearly unreasonable, but dictators do unreasonable things. It would also be rather foolish of the king to get rid of all his wise men, but dictators do this. Stalin was paranoid and had many purges, this meant that at the time of World War II many of his best generals and other leaders had been killed in the purges. This nearly resulted in Russian losing the war. Fortunately, there were some decent generals left, Marshall Zhukov in particular. Moreover, Hitler had an equally malign influence of the execution of German military strategy.
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