Dan 2:10 | KD | STEP | Since the king persisted in his demand, the Chaldeans were compelled to confess that they could not tell the dream. This confession, however, they seek to conceal under the explanation that compliance with the king’s request was beyond human power, - a request which no great or mighty king had ever before made of any magician or astrologer, and which was possible only with the gods, who however do not dwell among mortals. דּי כּל־קבל does not mean quam ob rem , wherefore, as a particle expressive of a consequence (Ges.), but is here used in the sense of because , assigning a reason. The thought expressed is not: because the matter is impossible for men, therefore no king has ever asked any such thing; but it is this: because it has come into the mind of no great and mighty king to demand any such thing, therefore it is impossible for men to comply with it. They presented before the king the fact that no king had ever made such a request as a proof that the fulfilling of it was beyond human ability. The epithets great and mighty are here not mere titles of the Oriental kings (Häv.), but are chosen as significant. The mightier the king, so much the greater the demand, he believed, he might easily make upon a subject.

‏ Daniel 2:10

Since the king persisted in his demand, the Chaldeans were compelled to confess that they could not tell the dream. This confession, however, they seek to conceal under the explanation that compliance with the king’s request was beyond human power, - a request which no great or mighty king had ever before made of any magician or astrologer, and which was possible only with the gods, who however do not dwell among mortals. דּי כּל־קבל does not mean quam ob rem, wherefore, as a particle expressive of a consequence (Ges.), but is here used in the sense of because, assigning a reason. The thought expressed is not: because the matter is impossible for men, therefore no king has ever asked any such thing; but it is this: because it has come into the mind of no great and mighty king to demand any such thing, therefore it is impossible for men to comply with it. They presented before the king the fact that no king had ever made such a request as a proof that the fulfilling of it was beyond human ability. The epithets great and mighty are here not mere titles of the Oriental kings (Häv.), but are chosen as significant. The mightier the king, so much the greater the demand, he believed, he might easily make upon a subject.