Daniel 4:28

"All this came upon the king Nebuchadnezzar. At the end of twelve months he was walking in the royal palace of Babylon. The king spake and said, Is not this great Babylon which I have built for the royal dwelling place, by the might of my power and for the glory of my majesty? While the word was in the king's mouth, there fell a voice from heaven, saying, O king Nebuchadnezzar, to thee it is spoken: The kingdom is departed from thee; and thou shalt be driven from men, and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field, and thou shalt be made to eat grass as oxen, and shall be wet with the dew of heaven, and seven times shall pass over thee; until thou know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will. The same hour was the thing fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar: and he was driven from men, and did eat grass as oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his hair was grown like eagles' feathers, and his nails like birds' claws."

From a human standpoint, Nebuchadnezzar had much of which to boast. Babylon was indeed the wonder of the ancient world; and something of the elaborate and expensive nature of the buildings there may be seen in the fact reported by Josephus, that in order to please his wife who had formerly lived in a mountainous country, he erected for her a mountain in Babylon, composed of magnificent stone terraces with trees, flowers, waterfalls, and many other wonders called "The Hanging Gardens of Babylon."[39] Human pride, however, is terribly sinful; and no man should boast of anything. Whatever a man is, whatever he may be able to do, however magnificent his achievements, or whatever honors men may be willing to confer upon him, nevertheless no man is or has anything that is not a gift of God. Culver pointed out that, "The king's last clear minded conscious experience directed his attention upward to that voice from heaven; and his first action following his recovery was to look upward."[40]

Millard stated that the boastful words spoken by the king here, "are reminiscent of the words stamped upon the thousands of bricks he used to build Babylon."[41]