When the king gets up, he summons the wise man of his kingdom. They are the top tier of the Babylonian empire, people who are connected to the gods in a special way. Nebuchadnezzar, wanting to get rid of his inner turmoil, desires to know what is going to happen.
We read in Daniel 2:2 about four groups that the king summons. Each of these four has their own specialty at court. We will take a look at these groups separately for a moment:
• The magicians. The translation magicians
carries the danger that we pay attention to only one side of their function. These are people who have learned their wisdom mainly from books. They occupy positions of responsibility in their service to the state. That these people are also connected to the occult world can be seen by the fact that the same Hebrew word is used for the magicians in Pharaoh’s court, who were able to turn a stick into a snake and water into blood, see Exodus 7:11–12.
• The enchanters. With this group we should think of people who use various herbs to make herbal potions to be dedicated to the gods. They prescribe these potions of the gods in all kinds of situations.
• The sorcerers. These are people who work with all kinds of spells and formulas to give the impression that they are able to influence the gods with their incantations.
• The Chaldeans. Sometimes this name is also used for the Babylonians in general, but this is not the case here. Here the Chaldeans are a group of people who occupy themselves with astronomy and astrology. They are also primarily the priests of the state religion at this time.
We see that Nebuchadnezzar commands a range of important intellectuals of this time to appear before him. He wants to hear and to learn from them what the dream means. His scholars have to tell him.
2 Then the king commanded that the magicians, the enchanters, the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans be summoned to tell the king his dreams. So they came in and stood before the king.