The head of the statue was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its trunk and thighs of bronze,
its legs of iron, and its feet partly of iron and partly of clay.
As you watched, a stone separated itself without any human hand, struck the statue on its feet made of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces.
Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were all broken into pieces which became like the chaff on a threshing-floor in summer; the wind blew them away without leaving a trace. But the stone which had struck the statue grew into a huge mountain that filled the whole earth.
"That is what you dreamt, and now we will give the king its interpretation.
Your majesty, king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, the strength and the glory;
so that wherever people, wild animals or birds in the air live, he has handed them over to you and enabled you to rule them all -you are the head of gold.
But after you another kingdom will rise, inferior to you; then a third kingdom, of bronze, which will rule the whole world.
The fourth kingdom will be as strong as iron. Iron can break anything into pieces, pulverize it and crush it. So just as iron can crush anything, this kingdom will break the other kingdoms into pieces and crush them.
Finally, you saw the feet and toes made partly of pottery clay and partly of iron; this will be a divided kingdom; yet it will have some of the firmness of iron, since you saw the iron mixed with clay from the ground.
Just as the toes of the feet were part iron and part clay, this kingdom will be partly strong and partly brittle.
You saw the iron mixed with clay; that means that they will cement their alliances by intermarriages; but they won't stick together any more than iron blends with clay.