Daniel 4:28-37
God’s patience granted the king twelve months to turn from his sins (vv. 27, 29). Alas! their secret root, pride, only made them increase more and more (Daniel 5:20). The day comes when Nebuchadnezzar himself gives the signal for disaster to strike: he utters the senseless phrase by which he reaches out to equality with God (v. 30). He has not finished speaking when the divine sentence falls from heaven, and what is pronounced takes place at "the same hour." What a spectacle! The greatest person on earth loses his reason, reduced to the level of a stupid beast. In fact, the only thing that raises a man up is submission to the will of God.
As soon as the king learns to lift his gaze upward, he is reinstated. He who from the top of his palace had sounded forth the might of his power and the glory of his majesty, now proclaims before all the world, "I . . . praise and extol and honour the King of heaven . . . What a change in the heart of this man: yesterday an infidel, today a worshipper!
He recognises the rightness of the solemn lesson he has learnt. The Most High who "setteth up . . . the basest of men" (v. 17) "is able to abase those that walk in pride" (v. 37; Luke 18:14). Psalms 2:10 may well serve as a conclusion to this account: "Be wise now therefore, O ye kings . . ."