And wheresoever the children of men dwell
Not in every part of the habitable world, but in every part of
his large dominion inhabited by men: the beasts of the
field, and the fowls of the heaven, hath he given
into thine hand;
all parks, chases, and forests (so that none might hunt or hawk
without his permission), as well as the persons and habitations
of men, were at his dispose; showing the despotic power and
sovereign sway he had over his subjects: and hath made thee
ruler over all:
men, beasts, and fowl: he not only conquered the Egyptians,
Tyrians, and Jews, and other nations about them; but, according
to Megasthenes F12 he exceeded Hercules in strength,
and conquered Lybia and Iberia, and carried colonies of them into
Pontus; and, as Strabo F13 says, carried his arms as far as
the pillars of Hercules: thou art this head of
gold;
or who was represented by the golden head of the image he had
seen in his dream; not he personally only, but his successors
Evilmerodach and Belshazzar, and the Babylonish monarchy, as
possessed by them; for this refers not back to the Assyrian
monarchy, from the time of Nimrod, but to its more flourishing
condition in Nebuchadnezzar and his sons; called a "head",
because the first of the monarchies; and golden, in comparison of
other kingdoms then in being, and because of the riches of it,
which the Babylonians were covetous of; hence Babylon is called
the golden city, ( Isaiah 14:4 ) and it
may be, because not so wicked and cruel to the Jews as the later
monarchies were: from hence the poets have been thought by some
to have taken their notion of the golden, silver, and iron ages,
as growing worse and worse; but this distinction is observed by
Hesiod, who lived many years before this vision was seen.