if you do not make the dream known to me, there is but one sentence for you. You have agreed to speak lying and corrupt words before me till the times change. Therefore tell me the dream, and I shall know that you can show me its interpretation.”
He adds again, Ye have prepared a fallacious and corrupt speech to relate here before me, as your excuse. Again, the king charges them with fraud and malice, of which they were not guilty; as if he had said, they purposely sought specious pretenses for practicing deceit.
We meet with a great difficulty in the date of this story; it is said to be in the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, Dan 2:1. Now Daniel was carried to Babylon in his first year, and, it should seem, he was three years under tutors and governors before he was presented to the king, Dan 1:5. How then could this happen in the second year?
Commenting on Daniel 2:1-13
But if ye will not make known unto me the dream,.... For the present he does not insist upon the interpretation, only the dream itself, at least this is now only mentioned; concluding that if they could do the one, they could do the other, as is after observed: there is but one decree for you; for them all; and that was the decree of...