God’s Word for You

Daniel 4:13-15a Cut it down

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Sunday, October 5, 2025

13 “While I was on my bed watching the visions, I also saw a watcher, a holy one, who came down from heaven.

Before we continue on, we should identify just who this holy watcher is. The Aramaic word, Ir (rhymes with ‘ear’), is related to a similar Hebrew word that means “awake, watchful” (Song of Solomon 5:2). It may have been used for angels or similar beings by the Babylonians. But since the angel himself will call himself one of the “watchers” (verse 20) and identify himself as one of them, we can be certain that Nebuchadnezzar only uses the word the angel himself used. It is as if today an angel appeared to one of us and did not say “Malach anochi” in Hebrew but just said in English, “I am an angel.” He would do that so that we could understand him. And so Daniel is content to use this same word, “watcher,” as he reports the account. But this chapter is the only place in the Bible where this word is used of angels.

14 He called out in a loud voice, ‘Cut down the tree and chop off its branches! Strip off its leaves and scatter its fruit. Let the animals run away from under it and the birds fly from its branches. 15 But leave the stump and its roots in the ground, bound with a band of iron and bronze, right there in the grass of the field.

The angel gives the command to cut down the tree and to chop away all of its branches. The leaves were to be stripped, and the fruit scattered. The animals and birds are told to run or fly away. Why? Their protection was gone. Whatever Nebuchadnezzar did to provide for his country, to protect it, to look after it, would disappear once this stroke had fallen and he was brought down. But he would not be killed.

“Leave the stump in the ground,” said the watching angel. And there is also a reference to grass at this point of the vision which we will let Daniel explain a little later.

So the peculiar and frightening details are these: An angel commands Nebuchadnezzar to be struck down like a tree that needed to be cut down. All of the protecting branches are to be chopped away. The glorious and beautiful leaves were to be stripped from the branches, too. Every piece of fruit was to be grabbed and tossed away, one after another after another, until it was all gone (this is the force of the verb). Then, all of those who had been thriving under the king’s protection were commanded to get while the getting is good. Run away! Fly away! Get away from there! But the stump wasn’t to be dug up or burned—it was to be left in the ground, but bound with iron and bronze.

Nebuchadnezzar was going to be removed from his throne, yet he was not to be killed. And yet again, he was to be bound, chained, shackled with strong metal bands. Why? Why would a man in his sixties need any more to hold him than a locked door? Some part of the vision would need more explaining; something, perhaps, that involved being “right there in the grass of the field.”

Politically and historically, we know that during the coming crisis, one of Nebuchadnezzar’s younger sons was named heir or regent for his father. He was Evil-Merodach, and in the Bible he is known only for one thing. It was he who released Jehoiachin king of Judah from his prison and allowed him to have a seat at the table with him in the palace in Babylon, and he was even given an allowance of money for the rest of his life (Jeremiah 52:31-34). Evil-Merodach was only on the throne for a year or so.

This passage proclaims the law in a direct and specific way to Nebuchadnezzar, and yet he did not know it yet. Therefore the law was being proclaimed in these ways:

1, He, Nebuchadnezzar, was the tree. These things would happen to him, including his fall, and what the angel of the vision calls “being bound.” This was not a physical binding with chains or bands, but the semi-exile of the king away from his family, his house, and his people.

2, He could not understand apart from faith. The vision revealed many things about Nebuchadnezzar’s future, but he was helpless to understand without the prophet Daniel.

3, Only Daniel, the Lord’s true prophet, could explain the vision, and therefore all other religions in Nebuchadnezzar’s kingdom were false. This is emphasized and proven by the detail that the king himself admits: Before he ever spoke to Daniel, he had consulted with every other magician, astrologer, sorcerer and wise man in his kingdom. Only Daniel could help, and by Daniel’s constant admission, this could only happen by the grace of the Lord God himself.

There are times when our God must remind us all of the errors of our ways. He does this through his law and especially through the Ten Commandments and the explanations of the commandments given by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount and throughout his preaching. For Nebuchadnezzar, his great sin was the great sin of the ignorant and the heathen everywhere: He worshiped other gods. We must not dance over that First Commandment too quickly, for we dally with the modern deity of our own Opinion. This we must set aside and bury, to be forgotten forever, as Jacob did with the little household gods that some in his family were still using before he arrived at Bethel (Genesis 35:4). Bethel means “House of God,” and setting aside everything that does not set Christ up above all else is our constant task, we who live within the true Bethel, the Holy Christian Church. We give our devotion, our worship and our praise to Jesus our Savior, for he has covered over our grimy sinfulness with his holy perfection, and he has removed our sins and guilt forever with his own blood. Praise him now and always.

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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