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.