The Forgotten Dream of Nebuchadnezzar.

The second chapter of the Book of Daniel begins by telling us that Nebuchadnezzar had a dream that troubled him.  In verse 5 he says "The thing is gone from me" and then demands his court occultists to make the dream known to him or he'll kill them all.

Every single commentary or Bible Study on Daniel Chapter 2 I have read or watched or listened to has assumed that Nebuchadnezzar did not actually forget this dream, he's just doing this to test all his court magicians.

For a community that is generally all about not reading things into the text that aren't actually there, I find this really odd.  Nothing in the text of Daniel 2 says or implies this.

It makes me wonder, can these people simply not relate to this happening?  Because it happens to me all the time, I'll have a Dream, a Dream that was pretty bizarre and interesting, but within minutes or even seconds of waking up my memory of the dream has faded to nothingness.

Now I don't think any of my forgotten dreams were visions from God revealing his plans for the coming centuries.  And I also can't relate to wanting to kill other people for not telling me the contents of a dream they didn't have, but Absolute Monarchs do a lot of such things I can't relate too.

The idea that it's a test is stupid.  No one who does claim to know how to interpret dreams, claims they can interpret a dream they don't know the contents of.  Now again, what Nebuchadnezzar is doing in my face value interpretation isn't rational either.  But it's the people saying he's lying about this who think he's being some champion of logical thinking.

It reflects how Protestant Christians sometimes feel compelled to in certain areas think like Atheists.  By thinking anything that exposures those sharletons with their Psychic hotlines must be serving the greater good.  But the Hebrew Bible was never operating under an assumption that occultists have no real power.

Now when Daniel describes the Dream to Nebuchadnezzar and then interprets it, that probably jogged his memory and brought it back to him.