C. F. Keil and Franz Delitzsch on Daniel 4:10-11

Dan 4:10-11 (Hebrew_Bible_4:7-8)

Nebuchadnezzar in these verses tells his dream. The first part of v. 10 is an absolute nominal sentence: the visions of my head lying upon my bed, then I saw, etc. - A tree stood in the midst of the earth. Although already very high, yet it became always the greater and the stronger, so that it reached eve unto heaven and was visible to the ends of the earth. V. 11. The perf. רבה and תּקיף express not its condition, but its increasing greatness and strength. In the second hemistich the imperf. ימטא, as the form of the striving movement, corresponds to them. Daniel B. Michaelis properly remarks, that Nebuchadnezzar saw the tree gradually grow and become always the stronger. חזות, the sight, visibleness. Its visibility reached unto the ends of the earth. The lxx have correctly ἡ ὅρασις αὑτοῦ; so the Vulgate; while Theodotion, with τὸ κύτος αὐτοῦ, gives merely the sense, its largeness, or dome. Hitzig altogether improperly refers to the Arab. ḥawzah; for ḥwzh, from ḥwz, corresponds neither with the Hebr. חזה, nor does it mean extent, but comprehension, embracing, enclosure, according to which the meanings, tractus, latus, regio, given in the Arab. Lex., are to be estimated.