Dreaming About the President: The Bible Gives It No Meaning

Biblical Dream InterpretationSee all 70 articles in this series

Scripture records no dream about a president, and gives no meaning to one. There were no presidents in the ancient world, and the Bible offers no rule for reading a modern office into a night image.

But it has a great deal to say about rulers — more than most of us are comfortable with, in both directions.

It interprets two, and both belong to kings rather than to the people dreaming about them.

Pharaoh dreams of cattle and grain, and Joseph tells him what is coming. Nebuchadnezzar dreams of a statue and later of a felled tree, and Daniel tells him what they mean — including, in the second case, that the king himself will lose his mind for a season.

In both cases God is speaking to the ruler, about his own reign, through a prisoner. Never once does Scripture interpret a subject’s dream about a ruler. There is no pattern here to apply, and we would have to invent one.

Two things, and they sit in tension, and Scripture never resolves the tension for us.

The first is that rulers are under God and not above him. Daniel says it plainly to a man who had every power over his life: He changes times and seasons; he deposes kings and raises up others. And Proverbs gives us the image that ought to calm anyone watching the news at midnight: In the Lord’s hand the king’s heart is a stream of water that he channels toward all who please him.

A stream that can be channelled. Not a force that cannot be moved.

The second is that we are told to pray for them — and the instruction is startlingly unqualified. I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people — for kings and all those in authority.

Paul wrote that under Nero.

Let us be clear about this, because it is where people get stuck.

To pray for a ruler is not to approve of him. Paul was not commending the emperor; he was executed by that regime. The prophets who prayed for kings are the same prophets who told those kings, to their faces, that they had robbed the poor and shed innocent blood. Nathan prayed for David and then walked into his house and said you are the man.

Scripture holds both without embarrassment: intercede for them, and tell the truth about them. It is our age that finds the combination difficult.

Many people will have arrived here after a dream that was really about fear — of an election, a policy, a direction a country seems to be taking, something happening to people we love.

That fear is not irrational and Scripture does not scold it. What it does is relocate the throne.

Daniel served four kings across two empires, and watched the second empire replace the first. He was a foreigner, a captive, a man with no vote and no army. And he kept his windows open toward Jerusalem three times a day and prayed, which was the one thing they eventually made illegal.

He outlasted all of them.

Let us not read the dream. Let us do the two things Scripture actually asks.

Pray for whoever holds the office, by name, including — especially — if we cannot stand them. It is difficult and it changes the one praying.

And then take up whatever small, unglamorous responsibility is actually ours today. Almost nobody reading this governs anything. Nearly all of us have a household, a workplace, a neighbour. The faithfulness Scripture asks for is usually that size.

May we be spared the exhaustion of fearing people God can channel like water.

May we pray for those we did not choose and would not choose.

And may we tend the small ground we have been given, which is the part that was ever ours.

Does the Bible show God speaking through dreams about rulers?

It does, twice famously — Pharaoh’s dream of the cattle and grain (Genesis 41) and Nebuchadnezzar’s of the statue (Daniel 2). In both, the ruler dreams and a prophet interprets, and the interpretation comes from God.

Does that mean my dream about a leader is a message?

No. Those dreams come with a prophet, a public interpretation and a verified outcome. Nothing in Scripture extends the pattern to private dreams.

What does the Bible say about those in authority?

That their hearts are not outside God’s reach — “the king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord” (Proverbs 21:1) — and that we are to pray for them (1 Timothy 2:1-2).

• Dreaming About Frogs: No Fixed Biblical Meaning
• Dreaming About Wolves: The Bible Gives It No Meaning — but It Warns About Wolves
• 12 Prayers For Repentance: Simple & Powerful

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