The most remarkable circumstance in Nebuchadnezzar’s life remains to be noticed.  Towards the close of his reign, when his conquests and probably most of his great works were completed, in the midst of complete tranquillity and prosperity, a sudden warning was sent him.  He dreamt a strange dream, and when he sought to know its meaning, the Prophet Daniel was inspired to tell him that it portended his removal from the kingly office for the space of seven years, in consequence of a curious and very unusual kind of madness.  This malady, which is not unknown to physicians, has been termed “Lycanthropy.”  It consists in the belief that one is not a man but a beast, in the disuse of language, the rejection of all ordinary human food, and sometimes in the loss of the erect posture and a preference for walking on all fours.  Within a year of the time that he received the warning, Nebuchadnezzar was smitten.  The great king became a wretched maniac.  Allowed to indulge in his distempered fancy, he eschewed human habitations, lived in the open air night and day, fed on herbs, disused clothing, and became covered with a rough coat of hair.  His subjects generally, it is probable, were not allowed to know of his condition, although they could not but be aware that he was suffering from some terrible malady.  The queen most likely held the reins of power, and carried on the government in his name.  The dream had been interpreted to mean that the lycanthropy would not be permanent; and even the date of recovery had been announced, only with a certain ambiguity.  The Babylonians were thereby encouraged to await events, without taking any steps that would have involved them in difficulties if the malady ceased.  And their faith and patience met with a reward.  After suffering obscuration for the space of seven years, suddenly the king’s intellect returned to him.  His recovery was received with joy by his Court.  Lords and councillors gathered about him.  He once more took the government into his own hands, issued his proclamations, and performed the other functions of royalty.  He was now an old man, and his reign does not seem to have been much prolonged; but “the glory of his kingdon,” his “honor and brightness” returned; his last days were as brilliant as his first:  his sun set in an unclouded sky, shorn of none of the rays that had given splendor to its noonday.  Nebuchadnezzar expired at Babylon in the forty-fourth year of his reign, B.C. 561, after an illness of no long duration.  He was probably little short of eighty years old at his death.

The successor of Nebuchadnezzar was his son Evil-Mero-dach, who reigned only two years, and of whom very little is known.  We may expect that the marvellous events of his father’s life, which are recorded in the Book of Daniel, had made a deep impression upon him, and that he was thence inclined to favor the persons, and perhaps the religion, of the Jews.  One of his first acts was to release the unfortunate Jehoiachin