The "great mountain" of God's Kingdom fills the whole earth, but the mountain initially begins at one point on the planet. Elsewhere in Daniel, the mountain is defined specifically as Jerusalem: "Your city Jerusalem, even Your holy mountain" (Dan. 9:16). The toes are therefore specifically dominating Jerusalem at the initial point of impact of the stone upon the land. And this is what we would expect from an Islamist confederacy dominating the land of Israel- Jerusalem is the key issue for them. And we know from Zechariah that "the city shall be taken". Note that the stone was cut out of a mountain, but after hitting the image, it becomes a mountain, filling the whole earth. This second mountain is interpretted as the Kingdom of God coming on earth. Biblically, mountains represent people. The equivalent in Daniel 7 is that the kingdoms of the world are given to "the people of the saints of the Most High" (Dan. 7:27). The first mountain likewise, therefore, refers to people. Out of the mountain of humanity, or perhaps the mountain of the Hebrew people (Ex. 15:17; Ps. 48:1; Is. 2:2 "the mountain of Yahweh's house / family / people will be exalted"), the Lord Jesus as the stone was cut out without human hands, born through the virgin birth. But the people of God will finally all become like Him. He as the stone becomes them, the mountain. We will finally manifest the Lord Jesus in totality, eternally. And if I am correct in understanding "the mountain" as specifically referring to God's people Israel, then the second mountain, the Kingdom of God on earth, is in fact the eternal and glorious re-establishment of the Kingdom of God as it was in the form of Israel. And this is indeed Bible teaching elsewhere (Ez. 21:25-27; Acts 1:7 and see more evidence in my Bible Basics chapter 5).
Detailed Notes on Daniel Chapter 2
2:19 A night vision- Effectively, Daniel dreamed the same as Nebuchadnezzar did, making him effectively equal to the king who thought he had no equal. And because he remembered the dream and the interpretation, he was thereby declared greater than him.
2:31 A great image- Matthew Henry notes: “Nebuchadnezzar was an admirer of statues, and had his palace and gardens adorned with them; however, he was a worshipper of images, and now behold a great image is set before him in a dream”. He was being shown that all his worship of images was effectively a worship of himself. And so it can be with all religion; we can think we are doing God service when in reality we are merely using it as a channel for worshipping ourselves. The only other time we encounter the sequence of gold, silver, brass and iron in Daniel is when we read that the idols of the Babylonians were made of these very metals (Dan. 5:4,23), as are the idols of the latter day Babylon (Rev. 18:12).
Whose brightness was excellent- “Brightness” was associated with the cherubim, symbols of God’s glory, which were to return from Babylon to Judah (Ez. 1:4,27,28); “brightness” was to be a feature of God’s restored Kingdom in Judah (Is. 59:9; 60:3,19; 62:1). It is very much the language of theophany (Ps. 18:12; Hab. 3:4) and the return of Christ (2 Thess. 2:8), and therefore the impression is given that this is a fake Kingdom of God, an anti-Christ, a system which appeared as the true when it was the false. Daniel concludes with a picture of how the brightness of God’s people shall be eternal, as opposed to the fading brightness of the image (Dan. 12:3).
Stood before you- The idea is ‘rose up before you’. It is the same word used of how God raises up kings (2:21), “another kingdom shall arise after you” (2:39), “the God of Heaven will set up a Kingdom” (2:44). The king was being enabled to see himself from outside himself. It is used eight times in Daniel 3 to describe how Nebuchadnezzar defied this revelation by ‘setting up’ another image, purely of gold, as if to say that his kingdom would in fact be eternal; he refused to accept that others would ‘arise’ after him.
2:32 The image’s head- Literally, the rosh, the great leader, of the image, the same rosh spoken of in Ez. 38 as leading a latter day invasion of Israel. The image is of a man; a latter day Nebuchadnezzar. For he was the head of gold. We note that the value of the metals decreases with distance from the head of gold. Dreams reveal our subconscious thoughts and value systems; Nebuchadnezzar saw himself as most important, and as he speculated about the future, those furthest from him in time seemed less important and valuable. But that illusion was shattered by the idea of the Jewish Messiah, the little stone, destroying the image and becoming an eternal mountain on earth. We need to learn the lesson, valuing the Kingdom perspective far above our immediate prospects. It’s worthy of note that the other empires, especially Medo-Persia and Rome, had far greater dominion and extent than Babylon ever had- both geographically and culturally. And yet from Nebuchadnezzar’s perspective, they were inferior and insignificant simply because they were far away from him in time. The dream was in a sense his dream, which is why the empires are described as “inferior” to him; this is how it was from his perspective. But the interpretation was from God, and the twist in the tail is that all these kingdoms of men are to become as nothing before the Kingdom of the God of Israel to be established on earth.
Legs of iron- the latter part of the Grecian monarchy, the two empires of Syria and Egypt, the former governed by the family of the Seleucidae, from Seleucus, the latter by that of the Lagidae, from Ptolemaeus Lagus . The idea that the two legs represent Eastern and Western Rome [centered in Constantinople and Rome] is problematic, in that these areas were not part of the land promised to Abraham. The image prophecy speaks specifically of kingdoms reigning over “the earth”, the land of Israel. Turkey [Constantinople] and Italy [Rome] were not part of that land. So I prefer to see the two Roman legs as referring to how the two Greek thighs were taken over by Rome. And they will have their revival in the last days in the form of the feet and ten toes- split between two groups, two entities which between them dominate the land promised to Abraham.
2:41 Potters’ clay- The coming of Christ is described in Is. 41:25 as: “I have raised up one from the north, and he shall come; from the rising of the sun, one who calls on My name; and he shall come on princes as on mortar, and as the potter treads clay”. The “princes” are surely some of the ten kings represented by the ten toes (2:44). Note that Israel’s latter day invader is described as one “from the north”; this person will be an imitation of Christ, the ultimate One from the north. His coming will be as “the rising of the sun” (Mal. 4:2), just as that of the antichrist will be. The coming of Christ upon princes who are as clay therefore connects directly with the language of Daniel 2. Habakkuk 2:6 speaks of the latter day Babylonian antichrist figure as one who “lades himself with thick clay”, to be destroyed by the Lord’s coming and the Kingdom of God, when “the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord” (Hab. 2:14). The “clay” would then refer to the same more lowly components of the feet part of iron and clay.
