Daniel 3:1

1. Kuenen ( Onderzoek, ii, N. 487), following Reuss ( La Bible, 1 879) and others, emphasizes the disproportion between the height and the breadth of this image, and also points out the “great improbability” that a “column of gold” of this size should have been erected. But if the height of 60 cubits (about 100 feet) is supposed to include a pedestal, the proper proportion for the figure is retained, while there is no reason to suppose that the writer here was speaking of a statue of solid gold of this size (which Meinhold has calculated would have contained gold worth $2,000,000,000), but rather of a statue covered with gold, which was very common at this time in Babylonia. The story of its immense size has recently been rendered less incredible by the discovery at San (Zoan), in Egypt, of an erect colossus of Ramses II sculptured out of hard red granite, standing 100 feet high from head to foot, or 115 feet high including the pedestal, and weighing 1,200 tons. Professor Fuller has even supposed that Nebuchadnezzar may have been led to erect his statue because of his admiration for this great Ramses colossus, which he might have seen during his invasion of Egypt. He thinks it may have been a statue of himself to celebrate his successful campaign there (in his “eighteenth year,” LXX.). The Pharaohs carved their effigies in stone, but he would cast his in gold. In favor of this it is also urged that the Aramaic word for statue used here is “a likeness.” Professor Jastrow, taking this to be a statue of Nebuchadnezzar, says that this “may be regarded as an authentic picture of a custom that survived to the closing days of the Babylonian monarchy, except that we have no proof that divine honors were paid to these statues,” and gives a corresponding act on the part of one of the earliest kings, Gudea ( Religion of Babylonia, 1899, p. 669).

But rather than regard this story as a Maccabean invention, or the command to worship his own image as the eccentric act of a king soon to become entirely insane, it may with more probability be supposed that this was a statue of some great Babylonian divinity rather than of the king. This very term “image” has been found used in the Sendjirli inscriptions of a date shortly preceding that of Nebuchadnezzar for the “statues” of the gods, as also in the Palmyrene inscriptions of the second century B.C. Dr.

Budge is sure this statue was the image of the god Bel, whose chief shrine at Babylon was called E-sagili, “lofty-headed.” The inscriptions speak of the setting up of such statues of the gods, as, for example, by Asurnazirpal, who says, “I erected an image of Ninib… of choice mountain stone and of pure gold.” While the gods were usually represented seated rather than standing, some erect statues have been found, like that of Ramses previously mentioned, and Pausanias states that Bathycles of Magnesia was just at this era (550 B.C.) erecting near Sparta a throne for a bronze standing statue of Apollo 30 cubits in height. If this were indeed an image of Bel-Marduk, then those who refused to bow down before it defied the great god of Babylon, to whom Nebuchadnezzar in his inscriptions is constantly ascribing lordship over the four quarters of the world. Origen, Irenaeus, and other early commentators often describe this as the figure of Antichrist, “the image of the beast” (Revelation xiii; xiv), whose satanic number was 666, “the devil no doubt inducing Nebuchadnezzar to erect it.”

It is worthy of notice that the dimensions given (60, 6) are distinctly Babylonian, since they used not the decimal but the sexigesimal system of notation.

In the inscriptions there is often found mention of a duru (“wall,” “fortress,” or “hill”). Lenormant and Oppert located a “plain of Duru” some dozen miles east of the city of Babylon, where there is a mound even yet bearing this name.