29. “While Your Majesty was sleeping, you dreamt about the future; and God, who reveals mysteries, showed you what is going to happen.
30. Now, this mystery was revealed to me, not because I am wiser than anyone else, but so that Your Majesty may learn the meaning of your dream and understand the thoughts that have come to you.
31. “Your Majesty, in your vision you saw standing before you a giant statue, bright and shining, and terrifying to look at.
32. Its head was made of the finest gold; its chest and arms were made of silver; its waist and hips of bronze;
33. its legs of iron, and its feet partly of iron and partly of clay.
34. While you were looking at it, a great stone broke loose from a cliff without anyone touching it, struck the iron and clay feet of the statue, and shattered them.
35. At once the iron, clay, bronze, silver, and gold crumbled and became like the dust on a threshing place in summer. The wind carried it all away, leaving not a trace. But the stone grew to be a mountain that covered the whole earth.
36. “This was the dream. Now I will tell Your Majesty what it means.
37. Your Majesty, you are the greatest of all kings. The God of heaven has made you emperor and given you power, might, and honour.
38. He has made you ruler of all the inhabited earth and ruler over all the animals and birds. You are the head of gold.
39. After you there will be another empire, not as great as yours, and after that a third, an empire of bronze, which will rule the whole earth.
40. And then there will be a fourth empire, as strong as iron, which shatters and breaks everything. And just as iron shatters everything, it will shatter and crush all the earlier empires.
41. You also saw that the feet and the toes were partly clay and partly iron. This means that it will be a divided empire. It will have something of the strength of iron, because there was iron mixed with the clay.
42. The toes — partly iron and partly clay — mean that part of the empire will be strong and part of it weak.
43. You also saw that the iron was mixed with the clay. This means that the rulers of that empire will try to unite their families by intermarriage, but they will not be able to, any more than iron can mix with clay.
44. At the time of those rulers the God of heaven will establish a kingdom that will never end. It will never be conquered, but will completely destroy all those empires, and then last for ever.