Nabuchodonosor's Madness and the Death of Herod
Old Testament: Daniel 4:26-30, 34
... Is not this the great Babylon, which I have built to be the seat of the kingdom, by the strength of my power, and in the glory of my excellence?... Thy kingdom shall pass from thee... thou shalt eat grass like an ox... The same hour the word was fulfilled upon Nabuchodonosor... Therefore I Nabuchodonosor do now praise, and magnify, and glorify the King of heaven: because all his works are true, and his ways judgments, and them that walk in pride he is able to abase.
New Testament: Acts 12:21-23
And upon a day appointed, Herod being arrayed in kingly apparel, sat in the judgment seat, and made an oration to them. And the people made acclamation, saying: It is the voice of a god, and not of a man. And forthwith an angel of the Lord struck him, because he had not given the honour to God: and being eaten up by worms, he gave up the ghost.
The connection
Two kings, the same sin, the same structure of judgment. Glory that belongs to God alone is silently accepted rather than deflected, and the strike falls immediately, mid-boast for Nabuchodonosor as he admires "the glory of my excellence" (Daniel 4:27), mid-oration for Herod as the crowd cries "the voice of a god, and not of a man" (Acts 12:22). Neither is punished for ruling; both are struck down at the exact moment they let a crowd's praise, or their own, settle on themselves instead of turning it back to God. The endings differ, and the difference is instructive. Daniel's king is humbled but restored to his reason after seven years, and his own confession afterward becomes the moral of the whole book: God is "able to abase" everyone who walks in pride (Daniel 4:34). Herod is simply ended, no restoration offered, because Luke's Herod was not merely vain, he had just executed James and imprisoned Peter for the same appetite that now accepts worship. Where Nabuchodonosor's pride cost him seven years of reason, Herod's pride, already stained with a martyr's blood, cost him everything.
Moral sense
The counter-example is scriptural too, and it is immediate. When the crowd at Lystra wants to sacrifice to Paul and Barnabas as gods, they do not pause to enjoy the compliment: "rending their clothes, they leaped out among the people," crying "we also are mortals, men like unto you" (Acts 14:13-14). The instinct required the moment praise arrives is not gratitude for the flattery but immediate, physical refusal, to tear the garment before it can settle in.
Anagogical sense
Nabuchodonosor's own confession points beyond his own story: "his ways judgments, and them that walk in pride he is able to abase" (Daniel 4:34). What was true for one Babylonian king in one lifetime is the pattern held out for the last judgment itself, every glory wrongly kept for self finally abased, and every glory rightly returned to God the only kind left standing.
Warrant
On the Catechism reference, which was audited and changed: CCC 1866 is a taxonomy of the capital sins after Cassian and Gregory, which says nothing about either king. 2113 does: idolatry as honouring a creature in place of God, power among the things named, which is what the crowd does when it calls Herod's voice the voice of a god.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 2113.
The verses
Daniel 4:26 · Daniel 4:27 · Daniel 4:28 · Daniel 4:29 · Daniel 4:30 · Daniel 4:34 · Acts 12:21 · Acts 12:22 · Acts 12:23
