Daniel contains several major prophecies tied to Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king who besieged Jerusalem and carried Daniel off to Babylon in 605 BC. The two that center most directly on the king himself are:
1. Daniel 2 — The statue dream (the rise and fall of empires)
In the second year of his reign, Nebuchadnezzar demanded that his wise men tell him both the dream and its meaning — they couldn't, so he ordered them killed. Daniel, then a young captive, prayed for revelation and was shown the same dream. He told the king:
- A massive statue stood before him: head of gold, chest and arms of silver, belly and thighs of bronze, legs of iron, feet partly iron, partly clay.
- A stone "cut out without hands" struck the feet and shattered the whole image; the stone then became a great mountain that filled the earth.
- Daniel told the king directly: "Thou art this head of gold" — Babylon was the golden kingdom. After it would come a lesser kingdom (silver = Media-Persia), then a third (bronze = Greece under Alexander), then a fourth kingdom (iron = Rome) that would be divided — and "in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed."
This is a prophecy about Nebuchadnezzar's kingdom and what would succeed it, not about the man himself.
2. Daniel 4 — The tree vision (prophecy directly to the man)
A year after the statue dream, Nebuchadnezzar had a second dream: a great tree at the center of the earth, reaching to heaven, whose fruit fed all. A holy watcher cried out: "Hew down the tree, and cut off his branches… yet leave the stump of his roots in the earth… and let it be wet with the dew of heaven, and let his portion be with the beasts of the field… till seven times pass over him."
Daniel — visibly shaken — told the king plainly:
- The tree was Nebuchadnezzar himself.
- His kingdom would be taken from him; he would live "with the beasts of the field," eat grass like an ox, be "wet with the dew of heaven," and his hair would grow like eagles' feathers and his nails like birds' claws — for seven years.
- This would happen "till thou know that the heavens do rule" — i.e., until he acknowledged that God, not he, ruled the world.
- When he humbled himself, the kingdom would be restored to him.
Twelve months later, while walking on the roof of the royal palace and boasting "Is not this great Babylon, that I have built… by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty?" — the judgment fell immediately, and the king's reason left him for seven years until he finally praised the God of heaven.
3. Daniel 5 — The writing on the wall (after his death)
After Nebuchadnezzar's death, his son Belshazzar held a feast using the sacred temple vessels from Jerusalem. A disembodied hand wrote on the wall — "MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN" — and Daniel, now an elderly court official, read it: God had numbered the kingdom and finished it; Belshazzar had been weighed in the balances and found wanting; the kingdom would be divided and given to the Medes and Persians. That very night Babylon fell.
The throughline
The prophecies about Nebuchadnezzar are fundamentally about sovereignty — that the Most High rules the kingdoms of men and gives them to whomever He will (Daniel 4:17, 4:32). The statue shows Babylon at the head of a succession of empires; the tree dream shows the king personally humbled until he recognizes God's rule; and the writing on the wall shows Babylon's successor receiving the same lesson through its last king. Together they form the spine of Daniel's theology of history.
If you want, I can pull up the full Daniel 4 passage or go deeper on the "seven times" / "seven years" question — that one has a lot of debated interpretations.