Daniel 2:5

2:5 The king replied ¹  to the wise men, “My decision is firm. ²  If you do not inform me of both the dream and its interpretation, you will be dismembered ³  and your homes reduced to rubble!

Daniel 3:7

3:7 Therefore when they all ⁴  heard the sound of the horn, flute, zither, trigon, harp, pipes, ⁵  and all kinds of music, all the peoples, nations, and language groups began bowing down and paying homage to the golden statue that King Nebuchadnezzar had erected.

[2:5]  ¹ tn Aram “answered and said,” a common idiom to indicate a reply, but redundant in contemporary English.

[2:5]  ² tn It seems clear from what follows that Nebuchadnezzar clearly recalls the content of the dream, although obviously he does not know what to make of it. By not divulging the dream itself to the would-be interpreters, he intends to find out whether they are simply leading him on. If they can tell him the dream’s content, which he is able to verify, he then can have confidence in their interpretation, which is what eludes him. The translation “the matter is gone from me” (cf. KJV, ASV), suggesting that the king had simply forgotten the dream, is incorrect. The Aramaic word used here (אַזְדָּא, ’azda’) is probably of Persian origin; it occurs in the OT only here and in v. 8. There are two main possibilities for the meaning of the word: “the matter is promulgated by me” (see KBL 1048 s.v.) and therefore “publicly known” (cf. NRSV; F. Rosenthal, Grammar, 62-63, §189), or “the matter is irrevocable” (cf. NAB, NIV, TEV, CEV, NLT; HALOT 1808 s.v. אזד; cf. also BDB 1079 s.v.). The present translation reflects this latter option. See further E. Vogt, Lexicon linguae aramaicae, 3.

[2:5]  ³ tn Aram “made limbs.” Cf. 3:29.

[3:7]  ⁴ tn Aram “all the peoples.”

[3:7]  ⁵ tc Though not in the Aramaic text of BHS, this word appears in many medieval Hebrew MSS, some LXX MSS, and Vulgate. Cf. vv. 5, 10, 15.