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1. What an incongruous thing it is for a king to be eating grass. It is good for cattle, but not fit for man. Yet the scene is as common as daylight. When I see a man of regal nature made to rule in realms of thought, capable of all moral elevation, besotting his faculties, attempting out of low sensualities to satisfy his immortal energies, coming down off his throne of power into brutalities, sacrificing his higher nature to his lower nature, coming down, and coming down, until all his influence for good is gone, I cry out, "There is a king eating grass like an ox."

2. Conviction is not conversion. Who is this man who makes the boast about Babylon? The very man who, under the revelation of dreams that Daniel made from Heaven, deeply humbled himself while he confessed that God is a God of gods cad a Lord of lords; yet behold that humbling and arousing did not result in a radical change. Conviction is merely a sight of sin; conversion is a view of pardon. Conviction is the pain, conversion is the messenger that cures it. Thousands have experienced the former who never experienced the latter.

3. Pride is the precursor of overthrow. He who is down cannot fall.

4. What a terrible thing is the loss of reason! In this world of sad sights, the saddest is the idiot's stare. Strong drink is the cause of more insanity than anything else.

5. How quickly turns the wheel of fortune, from how high up to how far down went Nebuchadnezzar. Of all fickle people in the world, Fortune is the most fickle.

6. Learn the comforting truth, that afflictions are arrested as soon as they have accomplished their mission; and

7. Connected with the most distressing judgments of God where are displays of Divine mercy. God might justly have left Nebuchadnezzar in the field, but infinite compassion brought him back to the palace.

(T. De Witt Talmage, D.D.)

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KJV: The same hour was the thing fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar: and he was driven from men, and did eat grass as oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown like eagles' feathers, and his nails like birds' claws.

WEB: The same hour was the thing fulfilled on Nebuchadnezzar: and he was driven from men, and ate grass as oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of the sky, until his hair was grown like eagles' [feathers], and his nails like birds' [claws].