Menasseh ben Israel — Even yeqarah / Piedra gloriosa o de la estatua de Nebuchadnesar (1655)

2 STATUE OF
can be seen in Sixtus Senensis, Francisco Vales in his Sacred Philosophy, and Jerome) that this Statue was a symbol of the four Monarchies and most flourishing empires that successively held the empire of the world: such as the Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans. Someone might now ask if the empire of the Assyrians, Medes, Parthians, Scythians, Tatars, and Chinese were equally powerful, why did Daniel make no mention of them? This is answered in various ways, but the truth is that, since Daniel and the Israelites did not know the power and tyranny of other princes or monarchs, and were primarily and gravely molested by the Babylonians, then by the Persians,