The Pulpit Commentary — Daniel — Section 87

rnnio. Pnrticlos are good notes of age, o.e oould only mean to him treason. They di,l thoy ore Iese liablo to ohonge than nouns not tell him his dreo.m, not becallllo thoy substantive. could not, but because they woul,l not in Ver. 7.-They answered again and au.id, order that the dieo.eter-for such he w~ul<l Let the king tell hla servants the dream, be sure the dream portenrle<l-mi~ht not ho nnd we will show the interpreto.tion of it, averted by timely sacrifices. If the e1"Lo- The Beptungint Version horo is," And they rnte treatises on mngio o.nd <livino.tion nuewered the eoconcl time, enying, 0 king, which have come to U3 1 so far as hns b, en toll the tlroom, nnd thy eorvo.nts will discovered, only in frngmcnte, were, com- judge of thoso things." Theodotion, the plete, it is not impossible that we migLt ho Peehittn, o.nd the Vulgnte ngree with the able to tell what interpretation these wise Mr1ssorctio. The wise men are unable to men would have put on the dream, hn,I satisfy the king's tlemnn<ls, Ewnlcl com- they been tol<l it. It would be a curioua ments on the foot that none of them had exercise, for eerie.inly Danicl'e inlerpretn- the inventiveness to mnke up n dream, and tion would not be the result. We must toll the !ling tho.t bad been his dream, He return to the versions for a l:ttlc. In or,e o.drnits himself that there might have been respect the Septuagint is closer to the risk of the king discovering the deception, lfoseorelio than Thrndotion, by ho.v;n;; if no flash of reviving memory in hie mind Jl.{-yovur, the participle, instead of ,&rav. answered to their invention. On our We direct attention to this, with a view to hypothesis thnt the king had not forgotten the phenomenon we find in the succeeding his dream, but woe testing their powers, clause. The Septuagint rendering is given it was not only in the highest degree above. The most noticeable thing which hazardous, but it we.a certnin of failure. the reader will find about this rendering 'fhey must have known the co.ee to be is the change of person in the last clause. 11s we imagine it, or, when they were As it stands in the Massoretic text, it is sentenced to death, they wouhl have run certainly tile first person plural imperfect the hazard, on the plea, " If we perish, we pael of mn; but in Syriac the preformati ve perish." There was a chance, though a l wus the sign of the third per,on in the faint one, of success in the attempt to po.Im imperfect, o.s well as of the fust person oft' upon the king their own imaginings for plural ; hence, if there were o. little un- his dream ; there was a certainty of death certainty as to the end of the word, it was if they did nothing. All they can do, how- an easy mistake to one who was reading ever, is simply to repeat what they before from o. mo.nuscript in Eastern Aramaic, Eaid, "Tell us the dream, and we will find bnt e.n impossible one for a Ecribe trans- the interpretation of it." Nebuchadnezzar lating from e. manuscript written in Cha!dee, has often been denounced as specially or Western Aramaic. It cannot be urged foolish and tyrannical on account of this plausibly that the change might simply demand which he made of the wise men; result from a free translation, for tile slavish but tyrannical though he was, and foolish 11cour11cy of the rest of the verse precludes though he seems at times, looked at from that escape. As the reading of the Greek oar elevation, this demand of hie is not an is confirmed by the version of Paulus Tel- example either of his folly or his tyralllly. lensie, the probability is great of a various These soothsayers enjoyed great honour ree.ding. This is another evidence tlrn t o.nd great revenues, on the assumption that D11niel was origino.!ly written in Eastern, they possessed certain powers of foreseeing not Western Aramo.fo. It may be observed the future. He demands of them, instead of that while in the Maesoretic text the verb o.u enigmatical statement of what wo.e com- "toll" (y'emar) is put in the imperfect, in ing on the earth, that they tell him what he the Septuagint it is translated as if it were had dreamed. They professed to be able to imperative. The differencti between the discover thefts, and where stolen property third person imperfect and the second per- was; they professed to point out men who son imperative is the presence, in the case of were devising e,il against another. If the former, of the preforrnatiye y ('), which their claims were trnt>, they could surely is absent in the other. 'l'ho.t i~ a thing tell the kiug his dream, They were thus tho.t might easily happen, tbe.t • (yodh) employed and honoured in order that they might be dropped or inserted mistakenly; should foretell to the king any fortune, good consequently, this affords no evidence that or bad, impending himself or the nation. tho Septuagint translator took liberties with His dreo.m presumably foretold the future; his text. The question may be put, how they affirmed that they knew the future; for these scotbs,,yers knew they were iu,- they surely might tell the king what poetors. Most likely they were unconscious prophecy was made to him in bis dream. of e.nythiug approaching imposition. \Ye Believing in the reality of their powers know the elaborate rules by wliich t.h,-v with ,111 tho foith or o. ro.no.tio, tlceir i-efusal ' clctcrwined the exact meaning of every  48 THE BOOK OF DANIEL. [en. n. 1--49.