Therefore, O king, let my counsel be acceptable to you: break off your sins by practicing righteousness, and your iniquities by showing mercy to the oppressed, that there may perhaps be a lengthening of your prosperity.”
Since interpreters do not agree about the sense of these words, and as the doctrine to be derived from them depends partly upon that, we must remark, in the first place, that מלכי, meleki, means “my counsel.” Some translate it “my king,” and both words are derived from the same, root מלך, melek, signifying “to reign; but it also signifies counsel”.
We have here the interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's dream; and when once it is applied to himself, and it is declared that he is the tree in the dream (Mutato nomine de te fabula narratur - Change but the name, the fable speaks of thee), when once it is said, Thou art the man, there needs little more to be said for the explication of the dream.
Commenting on Daniel 4:19-27
At the end of twelve months,.... After the dream, and the interpretation of it; which, according to Bishop Usher (s), Dean Prideaux (t), and Mr. Whiston (u), was in the year of the world 3435 A.M., and before Christ 569, and in the thirty sixth year of his reign: one whole year, a space of time, either which God gave him to repent in, or...