Daniel 4:4
Nebuchadnezzar Dreams of a Tree Chopped Down
4:4 (4:1) 1 I, Nebuchadnezzar, was relaxing in my home, 2 living luxuriously 3 in my palace.
Daniel 10:2
10:2 In those days I, Daniel, was mourning for three whole weeks. 4
Daniel 12:5
12:5 I, Daniel, watched as two others stood there, one on each side of the river. 5
1 sn This verse marks the beginning of chap. 4 in the Aramaic text of Daniel (see the note on 4:1). The Greek OT (LXX) has the following addition: “In the eighteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign he said.” This date would suggest a link to the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. In general, the LXX of chapters 4-6 is very different from the MT, so much so that the following notes will call attention only to selected readings. In Daniel 4 the LXX lacks sizable portions of material in the MT (e.g., vv. 3-6, 31-32), includes sizable portions of material not in the MT (e.g., v. 14a, parts of vv. 16, 28), has a different order of some material (e.g., v. 8 after v. 9), and in some instances is vastly different from the MT (e.g., vv. 30, 34). Whether these differences are due to an excessively paraphrastic translation technique adopted for these chapters in the LXX, or are due to differences in the underlying Vorlage of the LXX, is a disputed matter. The latter seems more likely. There is a growing trend in modern scholarship to take the LXX of chapters 4-6 much more seriously than was the case in most earlier text-critical studies that considered this issue.
2 tn Aram “my house.”
3 tn Aram “happy.”
4 tn Heb “three weeks of days.” The inclusion of “days” here and in v. 3 is perhaps intended to call attention to the fact that these weeks are very different in nature from those of chap. 9, which are “weeks of years.”
5 tn Heb “one to this edge of the river and one to that edge of the river.”