How Nebuchadnezzar Became a Dwarf

For Jewish tradition, it was incongruous that Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylonia continued to be a major historical figure and successful monarch even after he destroyed the First Temple and exiled the Judeans to Babylon. The concerns of the prophet Habakkuk regarding the success of the wicked (Hab. 1-2) are traditionally interpreted as dealing with this matter.¹ Some of this incongruity deepened because of how Nebuchadnezzar is depicted in the first four chapters of the Book of Daniel. They seem to show Nebuchadnezzar in a relatively positive light. He is depicted as the head of gold, that is, the greatest king in history (Dan. 2:37-38), he recognizes the God of the Jewish people (Dan. 2:46-47; 3:31:33; 4:31-34), and Daniel and his friends are portrayed as loyal and supportive of this king, serving him in positions of power (Dan. 1:19-21; 2:48-49; 3:30).

Modern biblical criticism contrasts this relatively positive portrait to the negative assessments of foreign kings in Daniel 7-12.² This is taken as evidence that the first half of the book was written well before the latter half which was understood to have been written in Maccabean times as a polemic against Antiochus IV.³

However, it is not true that Daniel 1-6 presents only positive portraits. In Daniel 1-4, Nebuchadnezzar, who is called the “servant of God” in Jeremiah 25:9; 27:6 and 43:10, who has mighty victories as part of God’s plan in II Kings 24 and II Chronicles 36, now has a dream of the future and learns about the downfall of his mighty kingdom (Dan. 2); Balthazar will see the writing on the wall with the same message in Daniel 5. Daniel 3 is about Nebuchadnezzar’s command to worship a statue of gold on the penalty of death. Daniel 4 depicts Nebuchadnezzar’s descent into madness; Nebuchadnezzar suffers the humiliation of acting like an animal for seven years. Other kings are also portrayed negatively, Balthazar who uses the Temple objects in his feast in Daniel 5, and even Darius, a positive figure, is portrayed as being manipulated by his crafty underlings in Daniel 6.⁴ The portrayal of kings is not easily divided into positive and negative in the two sections of Daniel.

Furthermore, there is a common theme throughout the Book of Daniel, that history functions according to a pattern that will continue through centuries and empires. This plan is referred to in one way or another in most of the chapters in both “parts” of the book. When one of the kings will reach a new level of evil and arrogance, it will mean that a new period of history is about to come.

Still, this more nuanced approach to the kings, and particularly Nebuchadnezzar was not sufficient for later tradition. The Jewish interpretive process seeks to rectify the theological incongruity of a mighty enemy of the Jews who was never punished as it was felt that he deserved. The midrashic interpreters will humiliate and respond to Nebuchadnezzar in a manner that the Book of Daniel does not seem to do sufficiently. The Midrash does not only supply what it finds missing in the Book of Daniel; more broadly it seeks to rectify what is wrong with a world where evil tyrants prosper.

Nebuchadnezzar II in History

Jewish interpretation had to contend with what can only be recognized as Nebuchadnezzar’s major historical achievements. Nebuchadnezzar II’s father Nabopolassar (Nabû-apla-uṣur) founded the Neo-Babylonian dynasty. Nabopolassar ruled from 626 BCE and died in 605 BCE at the age of 53; his eldest son Nebuchadnezzar (Nabû-kudurri-uṣur), already a famous and formidable general who had soundly defeated the Egyptian armies near Carchemish on the Euphrates in early 605 BCE, became king that year and ruled until 562 BCE. He immediately began to expand the borders of the Babylonian Empire and conquer its neighbors. He spent the next few years winning the submission of Damascus and other cities in Syria. In the years 601-598 BCE, he fought Necho II (though he seems to have endured heavy casualties) and plundered Arabia. In 598 BCE, he besieged Jerusalem (II Kgs. 24) and made King Jehoiachin prisoner, and in 588 BCE again captured the city, and carried King Zedekiah, who had rebelled against him, captive to Babylon (II Kgs. 25). Josephus gives an account of his expeditions against Tyre and Egypt, which are also mentioned in detail in Ezekiel 27-29. He then devoted his attention to the subjugation of kingdoms and peoples to the east and north. In 594/3 BCE, he sent his army to the west again, possibly because of concern about Psamtik II’s rise to power in Egypt. Nebuchadnezzar incorporated Phoenicia and the former Assyrian province of Cilicia into his empire.

During the forty-three years of his reign, Nebuchadnezzar transformed Babylon into the greatest city in Mesopotamia. He also consciously promoted his personal legacy. He built and renovated major structures, as history loves builders. The Etemenanki, the Walls of Babylon and the Hanging Gardens became famous in the ancient world and were mentioned by Herodotus and Diodorus. He constructed the Processional Way that passed through the Ishtar Gate and the walls of Babylon and ended at the center of the city at the site of Etemenanki and Esagila. This road was over a half a mile long, seventy feet wide, with walls rising over fifty feet on either side. The walls were decorated with over one hundred twenty images of dragons, bulls, lions, and flowers in gold. By connecting these buildings with one street, Nebuchadnezzar built a memorial to his greatness. This is the context for Daniel 4:26 where Nebuchadnezzar walks on his palace roof and exclaims, There is great Babylon, which I have built by my vast power to be a royal residence for the glory of my majesty! (Dan. 4:26).

All of this deepens the incongruity by recognizing the greatness of a figure that did so much evil to the Jewish people. And yet, Jewish interpretation had centuries to develop its own ingenious and meaningful interpretive process concerning Nebuchadnezzar, which we can outline as follows:

1. Despite Jeremiah’s dire warnings (Jer. 20-22; 24-29; 32; 34-45; 52) the Judeans rebel against their Chaldean overlords.

2. Jeremiah calls Nebuchadnezzar “God’s servant” (Jer. 25, etc.) who is sent as an instrument to punish the Judeans.⁵

3. Nebuchadnezzar defeats the Judeans but thinks it is because of his own power. The “oracle against Babylon” refers to Nebuchadnezzar in a very negative way. The people, now in exile, look toward a future restoration, hoping that God will avenge the suffering that Israel has suffered at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar (Jer. 50:17; 51:34).

4. In Daniel 1-4, God sends signs, and after experiencing each dramatic demonstration of God’s power, Nebuchadnezzar seems to understand that everything that has happened is because of God. He does not really heed the message, however, and he is reduced to grazing like a beast for seven years; he then seems to finally acknowledge God’s greatness (Dan. 4).

This trajectory seems to provide a fairly positive ending to the biblical story of Nebuchadnezzar. Jewish tradition absorbs all of this and feels the need to humiliate Nebuchadnezzar and to acknowledge the pain and sorrow of the Exile in ways that the Book of Daniel does not.

The Midrash on Nebuchadnezzar

In the famous Psalm 137, the exiled Judeans lament, By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat, sat and wept, as we thought of Zion. There on the poplars we hung up our lyres, for our captors asked us there for songs, our tormentors, for amusement, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion.” How can we sing a song of the LORD on alien soil (Ps. 137:1-4).

The Judeans are asked to sing one of the sacred songs of Zion for the entertainment of the Babylonians. They are in mourning, for the Temple, for their homeland, for the lives they have led. They will not play, and put their instruments away.

Pesikta Rabbati provides a midrashic commentary on the Psalm. “[When he saw the Jews lamenting], Nebuchadnezzar said to them, “Why are you sitting and weeping?” and he called to the tribe of Levi and said to them, “Prepare yourselves: before we eat and drink I demand of you that you go and play your harps before me just as you used to play in your Temple before your God.” They looked at one another and said, is it not enough that we have destroyed His sanctuary by the multitude of our sins, but now we must go and play our harps before this dwarf?“ (Pesikta Rabbati 144a).⁶

Of course, this passage describing Nebuchadnezzar as being of extremely short stature is insensitive and politically incorrect, but the question remains, why would Jewish tradition say this? To call Nebuchadnezzar a dwarf would seem to be a ridiculous indulgence in an expression of contempt against the foreign king who destroyed the First Temple in Jerusalem and exiled the Judeans to Babylon. Indeed, it is all of these things, but it also is something more.

A story is created; now there is not just a general taunting request to remind the exiled of their beloved Temple but a specific demand by Nebuchadnezzar himself. To demand that the Levites, the Temple singers and musicians, play a holy song while the Babylonians eat and drink is a kind of parallel to the Babylonians feasting at a great banquet, drinking out of the gold and silver vessels that Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the Temple at Jerusalem (Dan. 5:2). The Judeans say that it was bad enough that the Temple had been destroyed because of their sins; they are not going to add to their sins by singing a sacred song at a pagan entertainment. Notice that while history would say that the Chaldean king had destroyed the Temple, here it is the Judeans who destroyed the sanctuary through their sins. Now Nebuchadnezzar does not get that credit/blame; he is just a tormentor who wants to make the Judeans feel worse than they already do. When they are asked to sing one of the sacred songs of Zion for the entertainment of the Babylonians of course they refuse.⁷

This passage from Pesikta Rabbati has a number of parallels. Relevant passages include Yalkut Shimoni to Daniel 4:14, “This refers to Nebuchadnezzar, the dwarf, who was a hand-breadth in size”; a midrashic commentary on Genesis 2:11 notes that Nebuchadnezzar was a “little dwarf, a handbreadth in size”;⁸ Pesikta de Rav Kahana has God stating “Behold what this dwarf of Babel hath done to me!”⁹

Elsewhere, this description of an enemy king is extended to Pharaoh: “And Avitul the scribe said in the name of Rav Pappa: The Pharaoh who lived in the days of Moses was a cubit tall, his beard was a cubit long, and his penis [parmashtako] was a cubit and a span, i.e., a cubit and the distance between the thumb and the little finger, in length, in order to fulfill what is stated: And He sets up over it the lowest of men (Dan. 4:14).”¹⁰ Since Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar are two manifestations of the evil of foreign kings, it would seem that Avitul the scribe had taken a verse from Daniel about Nebuchadnezzar and applied it to the Pharaoh of the Exodus.

Certainly the main point of making the king a dwarf is to condemn an enemy of the Jews. Still, being that Midrash functions by playing off of a hint in the biblical text, there should be some textual hint to this idea. The passage seems to be, Let his mind be altered from that of a man, and let him be given the mind of a beast, and let seven seasons pass over him. This sentence is decreed by the Watchers. This verdict is commanded by the Holy Ones. So that all creatures may know that the Most High is sovereign over thy realm of man, and He gives it to whom He wishes, and He may set over it even the lowest of men (Dan. 4:13-14).

This passage echoes clear biblical antecedents in Isaiah and Jeremiah to poetically describe how God can elevate the most humble person and lower the haughtiest. Compare Daniel 4:12, 14 and 20: In fetters of iron and bronze … So that all creatures may know with Isaiah 45:2 and 6: I will shatter doors of bronze/ And cut down iron bars … So that all who live may know. In Jeremiah 27:5, God says: It is I who made the earth and the men and beasts who are on the earth … and I give it to whomever I deem proper. I herewith deliver all these lands to My servant, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon; I even give him the wild beasts to serve him. It cannot be a coincidence that the verse in Jeremiah that has God giving Nebuchadnezzar the wild beasts is used now in a context where Nebuchadnezzar will share their lot and have the mind of a wild beast: He was driven away from men, he ate grass like cattle, and his body was drenched with the dew of heaven until his hair grew like eagle’s [feathers] and his nails like [the talons of] birds (Dan. 4:30).¹¹ Moreover, the author of Daniel 4 may have Ezekiel 17:6, concerning a vine of low height as a metaphor for lowly stature, in mind for our key phrase; it also cannot be a coincidence that this is in a passage about Nebuchadnezzar. Still, Nebuchadnezzar is not presented as a person who is of short stature in either passage.

God is the Most High and is placed in contrast to the lowest of men. Here the Midrash literalizes this poetic trope of ‘low’ to mean ‘short’. It is possible that this notion then is used to explain why Psalm 137 describes the exiles hanging up their harps on trees, in order to keep them away from a dwarf.

Midrash as a Bridge Within the Book of Daniel

Other midrashic passages are even more outlandish, both to medieval and especially modern sensibilities, saying that Nebuchadnezzar was transformed into a woman or was changed from one kind of beast to another every day. Saadiah Gaon tells us not to take such embellishments seriously: “Yet all of their arguments are but fables, and their intention was to go to an extreme in disgracing those who are arrogant and prideful before God.”¹² But these “fables” should be taken seriously, as they teach us not only about those who are embellishing but also about the Book of Daniel.

The Book of Daniel does begin to rectify a serious, theological problem; how Nebuchadnezzar, who was called “the servant of God,” who conquered the Judeans, exiled two waves of Judeans and burned the Temple, continued to have a long and successful reign as a mighty king. The punishment for his evil would come, but not in his lifetime. By presenting him with a dream of the four kingdoms that means that he is the gold but that his descendants will give way to another dynasty, the Book of Daniel effectively says, ‘Your descendants are doomed.’ Furthermore, in Daniel 4, Nebuchadnezzar is depicted as suffering himself. We watch the procession from victor to a king beset by a troubling dream to a madman who has the mind of a beast. And yet when we last see Nebuchadnezzar at the end of Daniel 4, he has had a kind of conversion to belief in God.

Daniel 1-6 was part of the Jewish interpretative process regarding Nebuchadnezzar, recognizing his power and creating or adapting stories about him. This still was not, however, harsh enough. So midrash took it from there, satirizing him in ways that led to the circus burlesque of making him a dwarf who could not reach the harps the exiled Judeans hung in the trees. Jewish interpretation transformed him according to its ongoing needs. Nebuchadnezzar finally is knocked down to size. The incongruity of an evil king who destroyed the Temple and exiled the Judeans is not resolved through interpretation, but there is a measure of rectification.

The Pesikta Rabbati passage articulates the emotion of the psalm and points back in the direction of the Book of Daniel. In fact, the midrash on Psalm 137 portrays the reality and pain of the Babylonian exile better than the Book of Daniel, where emphasis is placed on Jewish power in a foreign court. The Midrash reads the Psalm’s emotions into Daniel.

Thus the Midrash serves as a kind of bridge or transition between the first section of the Book of Daniel (chapters 1-6, the stories of Daniel’s life) and the second part of the book (chapters 7-12, the visions of Daniel). The Midrash retells the Nebuchadnezzar stories, the present, as it were, of Daniel’s life. The present is recast by calling the haughty king a dwarf and humiliating him. Then Daniel 7-12 envisions a future where all of the evil kings will get their due and all of the kingdoms will give way to the eternal kingdom of God. We are still in that present, contending with the reality of history with all of the tools we have been given by a very long and rich tradition.