Daniel 4:15-16

15, 16. The destruction of the tree is nearly absolute, since only a “stump” remains, not rooted solidly in its former place of life, but under a most strange and unnatural form of restraint. This stump represents Nebuchadnezzar (compare Isaiah 11:1), and the dreamer now sees the king rather than the tree, constrained and restrained by some unnatural compulsion, unprotected from the night dews, eating grass like the beasts of the field, and having the inner consciousness of an animal rather than of a man, until “seven times pass over him.” These times (literally, periods) may be “years” (Greek) or “months” (Lenormant), or, more in accordance with the literal meaning of the word, “seasons.” Thomson refers to J. Rendel Harris for the statement that “summer and winter are the only seasons counted in Babylonia,” which would make this expression parallel to the “times and time and half a time” of Daniel 7:25. “Seven” was, however, a round number with all the orientals. Gunkel sees in this figure a reference to the Babylonian world-tree, whose height reached to heaven, but whose roots were bound to the earth.