or Nabuchodonosor II. king of Assyria, son of Nabopolassar, and styled the Great, was associated by his father in the empire, 607 B.C. and the following year he took Jehoiakim king king of Judah prisoner, and proposed to carry him and his subjects in captivity into Babylon; but upon his submission, and promising to hold his kingdom under Nabuchodonosor, he was permitted to remain at Jerusalem.

In 603 B.C., Jehoiakim attempted to shake off the Assyrian yoke, but without success; and this revolt brought on the general captivity. Nabuchadnezzar having subdued the Ethiopians, Arabians, Idumaeans, Philistines, Syrians, Persians, Medes, Assyrians, and almost all Asia; being puffed up with pride, caused a golden statue to be set up, and commanded all to worship it; which Daniel's companions refusing to do, they were cast into the fiery furnace. But as he was admiring his own magnificence, by divine sentence he was driven from men, and in the scripture it is said to have eaten grass as oxen: i.e., he was seized with the disease called by the Greeks lycomathy, which is a kind of madness that causes persons to run into the fields and streets in the night, and sometimes to suppose themselves to have the heads of oxen, or to be made of glass. At the end of seven years his reason returned to him, and he was restored to his throne and glory. He died 562 B.C. in the 43rd year of his reign; in the 5th of which happened that eclipse of the sun mentioned by Ptolemy, which is the surest foundation of the chronology of his reign.