Tuesday · 25 November 2025

Tuesday of the Thirty-fourth week in Ordinary Time

Liturgy

You are viewing the readings for a past day.

Book of Daniel

Dan 2,31-45.

³¹ Daniel said to Nebuchadnezzar: “In your vision, O king, you saw a statue, very large and exceedingly bright, terrifying in appearance as it stood before you.

³² The head of the statue was pure gold, its chest and arms were silver, its belly and thighs bronze,

³³ the legs iron, its feet partly iron and partly tile.

³⁴ While you looked at the statue, a stone which was hewn from a mountain without a hand being put to it, struck its iron and tile feet, breaking them in pieces.

³⁵ The iron, tile, bronze, silver, and gold all crumbled at once, fine as the chaff on the threshing floor in summer, and the wind blew them away without leaving a trace. But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.

³⁶ "This was the dream; the interpretation we shall also give in the king's presence.

³⁷ You, O king, are the king of kings; to you the God of heaven has given dominion and strength, power and glory;

³⁸ men, wild beasts, and birds of the air, wherever they may dwell, he has handed over to you, making you ruler over them all; you are the head of gold.

³⁹ Another kingdom shall take your place, inferior to yours, then a third kingdom, of bronze, which shall rule over the whole earth.

⁴⁰ There shall be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron; it shall break in pieces and subdue all these others, just as iron breaks in pieces and crushes everything else.

⁴¹ The feet and toes you saw, partly of potter's tile and partly of iron, mean that it shall be a divided kingdom, but yet have some of the hardness of iron. As you saw the iron mixed with clay tile,

⁴² and the toes partly iron and partly tile, the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly fragile.

⁴³ The iron mixed with clay tile means that they shall seal their alliances by intermarriage, but they shall not stay united, any more than iron mixes with clay.

⁴⁴ In the lifetime of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed or delivered up to another people; rather, it shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and put an end to them, and it shall stand forever.

⁴⁵ That is the meaning of the stone you saw hewn from the mountain without a hand being put to it, which broke in pieces the tile, iron, bronze, silver, and gold. The great God has revealed to the king what shall be in the future; this is exactly what you dreamed, and its meaning is sure."