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Nebuchadnezzar Ate Grass Before His Throne Came Back

Daniel reads a dream to the king who burned Jerusalem. For seven months Nebuchadnezzar wanders among beasts before his reason returns.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. Daniel Did Not Soften the Sentence
  2. The King Became Half Ox and Half Lion
  3. Daniel Prayed for the King Who Burned Jerusalem
  4. The Throne Was Waiting

Daniel Did Not Soften the Sentence

The king has had a dream no one in Babylon can interpret. A great tree, visible from the ends of the earth, is cut down by a heavenly watcher. Its stump remains bound in the field. Its mind is changed from a man's to a beast's, and it lives among animals for seven times.

Daniel stands before Nebuchadnezzar and does not look for a way to spare the king what he is about to hear. The tree is you, he says. The beast-years are yours. The throne that makes you feel ultimate will not protect your mind, your speech, or your dignity. Until you know that heaven rules over earthly kingdoms, this is what waits for you.

A court prophet who flatters earns wages. Daniel does not flatter. His willingness to deliver an ugly truth to the most powerful ruler on earth is the first act of power in the story.

The King Became Half Ox and Half Lion

The Chronicles of Jerahmeel fills in the body that Daniel's interpretation only names. The punishment is not a complete animal transformation. From head to navel, Nebuchadnezzar appears as an ox. From navel to feet, he is a lion. His mind goes dark. His speech leaves him. He is publicly, visibly something the world has never seen.

The first forty days he roams among wild beasts, eating herbs from the ground. Then his awareness returns for forty days, and he spends them weeping over what he has done. Another forty days he hides in caves. A final forty days he descends again among the animals.

Four rounds of forty days. The human mind flickering in and out of the beast-condition like a torch in wind. The periods of weeping are almost more terrible than the periods of animal wandering. During those lucid weeks he knows exactly what has happened to him.

Daniel Prayed for the King Who Burned Jerusalem

That weeping matters for what comes next. Daniel prays for Nebuchadnezzar throughout the ordeal. The tradition does not explain why a Jewish prophet intercedes for the man who destroyed the Temple. It simply says that because of Daniel's prayer, Nebuchadnezzar's human nature returns at the end of the seven months.

This is not mercy extended to an innocent man. Nebuchadnezzar burned the sanctuary. He led the exile. He is remembered throughout Jewish sources as the destroyer of the First Temple. And Daniel still prays for him.

The story leaves that tension standing. It does not resolve it by making Nebuchadnezzar secretly righteous or by explaining that Daniel's intercession was strategic. The prayer is what it is: a righteous man asking for the restoration of the man who harmed his people.

The Throne Was Waiting

When the seven months end, Nebuchadnezzar's reason returns entirely. He lifts his eyes to heaven and acknowledges that God rules. His throne, which no one had taken, receives him back.

He does not immediately conquer or punish. He returns. The beast-period ends, the human period resumes, and the lesson that Daniel delivered is finally received. Whether it changes anything permanent in the king is left ambiguous. The Legends of the Jews notes that his death eventually came after a forty-year reign, and that even the denizens of the underworld feared his arrival.

NebuchadnezzarDanielJudgmentBabylon
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From the tradition

Sources

3 sources

The texts this telling draws on, in full. Open a card to read inline, or expand it for a wider, quieter read.

Antiquities X.10Antiquities of the Jews (Josephus)

Daniel was still a teenager when Nebuchadnezzar brought him to Babylon in chains. He and three companions from the royal family of Judah, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, were given Babylonian names, Babylonian education, and food from the king's own table. Daniel refused the food. He asked their guardian to let them eat only vegetables and water for ten days as a test. After ten days, the Jewish captives looked healthier and stronger than everyone eating royal meals.

That was just the beginning. Josephus records that Daniel became "very busy about the interpretation of dreams, and God manifested himself to him." When Nebuchadnezzar had a second dream, this time about a great tree cut down, its stump left in the field among wild beasts, none of the Babylonian wise men could interpret it. Daniel alone told the king the truth: the tree was Nebuchadnezzar himself, and he would lose his throne, live among animals in the wilderness for seven years, and only be restored when he acknowledged that God rules over all kingdoms.

It happened exactly as Daniel predicted. The most powerful king on earth was reduced to living like a beast. After seven years, Nebuchadnezzar prayed and was restored to his throne.

Generations later, King Belshazzar hosted a great feast using the sacred gold and silver vessels looted from the Temple in Jerusalem. In the middle of the banquet, a disembodied hand appeared and wrote on the wall: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. The king was terrified. None of his wise men could read the script. They called for Daniel, now an old man. He read the writing without hesitation: God has numbered your kingdom and finished it. You have been weighed and found wanting. Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians. That very night, Belshazzar was killed and Darius the Mede took the kingdom (Daniel 5:30).

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Chronicles of Jerahmeel LXVIChronicles of Jerahmeel (Gaster, 1899)

Nebuchadnezzar's transformation was not a complete change from man to animal. According to the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, a 12th-century Hebrew chronicle translated by Moses Gaster in 1899, he appeared as an ox from his head to his navel and as a lion from his navel to his feet. His mind was altered and his speech was taken from him, but his body remained partly human. The punishment was public, unmistakable, and deeply humiliating for the most powerful king on earth.

For the first forty days he roamed among wild beasts, eating herbs like cattle. Then for forty days his heart returned to human awareness, and he wept for his sins. Another forty days he spent hiding in caves. A final forty days passed among the animals again. Daniel prayed for him throughout the ordeal, and because of Daniel's intercession, the seven years of punishment prophesied were reduced to seven months.

When God restored Nebuchadnezzar to his throne, the king changed. He appointed seven judges to share his power, one for each year that had been decreed against him. He stopped eating meat and bread and drinking wine, living instead on herbs and seeds according to Daniel's counsel. He tried to make Daniel an heir alongside his own sons, but Daniel refused. "Far be it from me to leave the inheritance of my fathers for an inheritance of the uncircumcised," he said.

After Nebuchadnezzar's death, his son Evil-Merodach freed Jehoiachin, the exiled king of Judah, from prison and raised his throne above every other king in Babylon. Evil-Merodach did this partly from justice and partly from fear. His father had put him in prison alongside Jehoiachin, and the two had shared a cell. But Evil-Merodach feared his father might somehow rise from the grave, so Jehoiachin advised him to cut the corpse into 300 pieces and feed them to 300 vultures. "Your father will not rise," Jehoiachin told him, "until those vultures return every piece of flesh."

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Legends of the Jews 10:107Legends of the Jews

That was life under Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king who loomed over the ancient world like a thundercloud. But even the longest storms eventually break.

After forty years – a reign as long as King David's, no less! – Nebuchadnezzar finally died. Can you imagine the collective sigh of relief? The Zohar tells us that his death brought hope and joy to many. His severity had been so extreme that no one dared laugh in his presence. Even the denizens of Sheol, the underworld, trembled at his arrival, fearing he'd come to rule them too! But a heavenly voice, according to the legend, set things straight: "Go down, and be thou laid down with the uncircumcised." A rather ignominious end for such a powerful figure, wouldn't you say?

The story of his burial? It's… well, it's something else entirely. It gets pretty dark. there's this whole episode where Nebuchadnezzar goes a little.. wild. He spends seven years living among the beasts. Ginzberg's Legends of the Jews picks up this thread and it’s wild! During that time, his son, Evil-merodach, ruled in his place. But when Nebuchadnezzar returned, having apparently learned a lesson or two, he wasn't exactly grateful. Instead, he locked his son away for life.

So, fast forward to Nebuchadnezzar's actual death. Evil-merodach is understandably a little paranoid. The nobles come to him, offering homage as the new king, but he refuses! He's convinced it's a trick. He fears his father isn't really dead, that he's just vanished again, ready to reappear and reclaim the throne. Who could blame him?

Now, here's where the story takes a truly gruesome turn. To convince Evil-merodach that his father was genuinely, definitively dead, Nebuchadnezzar's enemies did something… extreme. They mutilated his corpse – horribly, brutally mutilated it – and dragged it through the streets. As we find in Midrash Rabbah, this was done to demonstrate beyond any doubt that the tyrant was gone for good.

It's a chilling image, isn't it? A powerful king, reduced to such a state. But perhaps, in a strange way, it's a reminder that even the mightiest rulers are ultimately mortal, and that their actions have consequences that can outlive them in truly terrible ways. What does it say about Nebuchadnezzar's reign that such a gruesome display was necessary to finally put his son's fears – and the nation's – to rest?

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