7. Once more they said, “Your Majesty, tell us the dream, and we’ll tell you its meaning.”
8. The king replied, “I’m sure you’re trying to buy some time because you know that I meant what I said.
9. If you don’t tell me the dream, you’ll all receive the same punishment. You have agreed among yourselves to make up a phony explanation to give me, hoping that things will change. So tell me the dream. Then I’ll know that you can explain its meaning to me.”
10. The astrologers answered the king, “No one on earth can tell the king what he asks. No other king, no matter how great and powerful, has ever asked such a thing of any magician, psychic, or astrologer.
11. What you ask is difficult, Your Majesty. No one can tell what you dreamed except the gods, and they don’t live with humans.”
12. This made the king so angry and furious that he gave an order to destroy all the wise advisers in Babylon.
13. So a decree was issued that the wise advisers were to be killed, and some men were sent to find Daniel and his friends and kill them.
14. While Arioch, the captain of the royal guard, was leaving to kill the wise advisers in Babylon, Daniel spoke to him using shrewd judgment.
15. He asked Arioch, the royal official, “Why is the king’s decree so harsh?” So Arioch explained everything to Daniel.
16. Daniel went and asked the king to give him some time so that he could explain the dream’s meaning.
17. Then Daniel went home and told his friends Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah about this matter.
18. He told them to ask the God of heaven to be merciful and to explain this secret to them so that they would not be destroyed with the rest of the wise advisers in Babylon.
19. The secret was revealed to Daniel in a vision during the night. So Daniel praised the God of heaven.
20. He said,“Praise God’s name from everlasting to everlastingbecause he is wise and powerful.
21. He changes times and periods of history.He removes kings and establishes them.He gives wisdom to those who are wiseand knowledge to those who have insight.
22. He reveals deeply hidden things.He knows what is in the dark,and light lives with him.
23. God of my ancestors, I thank and praise you.You gave me wisdom and power.You told me the answer to our question.You told us what the king wants to know.”