Those who walk in pride
[God] is able to humble.
—Daniel 4:37
No generation has escaped the reproof of Lord Acton’s epigram: “Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Nebuchadnezzar was a notorious example, erecting a ninety-foot statue in his own honor and strutting about his palace crowing, “Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for a royal dwelling by my mighty power and for the honor of my majesty?” (Dan 3:1; 4:30).
God intervened, driving him from luxury in a palace to insanity in a wilderness, eating grass like an animal.
Learning his lesson, Nebuchadnezzar acknowledged that God rules over human kingdoms and confessed that “Those who walk in pride [God] is able to humble.”
It remains so: “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled” (Lk 18:14). To God alone belongs glory: “Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen” (Mt 6:13).
Soli Deo Gloria
(Glory to God alone)