Making The Kingdoms
Kingdoms rise and fall. God reigns.
The Kingdoms begins with a tension that runs throughout the book of Daniel: Daniel lives under a succession of earthly kingdoms while remaining oriented toward another. These kingdoms are visible, monumental, and powerful. They have walls, temples, kings, and armies, all projecting a sense of permanence. The Kingdom of God is less obvious to the eye, yet Daniel’s visions reveal it to be the more enduring reality. The composition is built around this tension between the kingdoms that appear to rule the world and the Kingdom that ultimately does.
A WINDOW TOWARD JERUSALEM
Daniel 6 tells us that the windows of Daniel’s upper room opened toward Jerusalem, and that three times a day he knelt there to pray. The detail is brief, but it affirms Daniel spiritual discipline through prayer is strong and consistent as noted from Daniel 2. From Babylon, Jerusalem lies to the west. Daniel’s prayer is therefore not only a spiritual act, but an act of orientation: toward his homeland, toward the city of David, and toward the place where God had caused his name to dwell.
This practice echoes Solomon’s prayer at the dedication of the Temple in 1 Kings 8. Solomon anticipates a time when Israel might be defeated and carried into exile, and prays that if the people turn again toward their land, toward Jerusalem, and toward the Temple, God would hear them from heaven. Centuries later, Daniel appears to be living within that prayer. Though Jerusalem has fallen and the Temple has been destroyed, he continues to orient himself toward the place bound up with God’s covenant presence and promises.
The window therefore becomes more than an architectural opening. It becomes an expression of exile and longing. Babylon fills Daniel’s immediate world, but the open window directs his attention beyond it. It holds together what has been lost and what has been promised, the city in which Daniel presently lives and the city toward which he continues to pray. The empire surrounding him is visible and powerful, but it does not determine the direction of his life.
THE STARS
Behind the window and the clouds is a field of stars, representing the unseen world. Within The Kingdoms, they suggest that the visible world of Babylon is not the whole of reality. The stars open the composition beyond the immediate architecture of empire and point toward a realm that extends beyond what Daniel can presently see.
THE KINGDOM IN THE CLOUDS
Throughout Daniel, the visions pull back the visible world and reveal another layer of reality. In Daniel 7, after a succession of violent kingdoms appears in the form of beasts, Daniel sees “one like a human being” coming with the clouds of heaven. He is given dominion, glory, and kingship, and his kingdom is described as everlasting and indestructible.
The clouds in The Kingdoms come from this vision. They are not meant as a literal illustration of Daniel 7, but as a way of carrying its theology into the composition. Babylon rises from below, while the Kingdom of God comes from above. Earthly kingdoms build monuments, expand territory, and establish themselves through power, but the Kingdom of God does not arise from the same order. It comes from beyond it.
This movement also echoes Daniel 2, where Nebuchadnezzar’s statue of successive kingdoms is struck by a stone “not cut by human hands.” The stone becomes a mountain and fills the whole earth. Across Daniel, the contrast remains: earthly kingdoms are built, inherited, conquered, and eventually broken apart, while the Kingdom of God does not originate from human power. It is given by God and endures beyond them all.
THE PATTERN
Within the clouds is a simple geometric form: a square. That shape reaches back beyond Daniel to Exodus and the construction of the Tabernacle. When Moses receives instructions for the sanctuary, God repeatedly commands him to build according to the tabnît shown to him on the mountain. The Hebrew word tabnît can refer to a pattern, form, model, or design.
Moses does not invent the sanctuary from the ground up. He receives a pattern and gives that revealed order physical form. Hebrews later draws on this same imagery, describing the earthly sanctuary as a copy and shadow of heavenly things.
The square is derived from the Holy of Holies, the innermost sanctuary associated with the presence of God. Its cubic proportions provide a simple geometric language for divine presence, order, and rule. In The Kingdoms, this geometry stands in deliberate contrast to Babylon below. Babylon builds upward, constructing monuments that reach toward heaven, while the pattern of God’s Kingdom moves in the opposite direction: it is revealed from above and comes toward the earth.
That contrast is reinforced in the texture of the form itself. The square is marked by vertical striations, emphasizing descent. Where Babylon sprawls horizontally and strives upward, the geometry of the square moves downward, suggesting that the Kingdom of God is not built from below but comes from above.
The square therefore represents more than sacred geometry. It provides a way of depicting the rule and presence of God without representing his Kingdom as simply another earthly empire. The Kingdom of God is not a larger or better Babylon. Its source, order, and authority come from God.
BABYLON RISING
At the bottom of the image stands a ziggurat. Rather than using a generic ancient tower, its proportions are based on Etemenanki, the great ziggurat of Babylon dedicated to Marduk. Its name is commonly translated as “House of the Foundation of Heaven and Earth.” Etemenanki should not simply be identified with the tower of Genesis 11; the structure known from the Neo-Babylonian period belongs to a much later time. Still, the connection to Babel is difficult to ignore. The Hebrew Bible uses Babel for Babylon, and the city Daniel enters carries forward the same impulse first expressed in Genesis 11: humanity building upward in pursuit of greatness, permanence, and a name for itself.
The surviving evidence gives us a surprisingly concrete picture of Etemenanki. Its base measured roughly ninety meters square, and ancient descriptions suggest that its height approached the same dimension. Those proportions became the basis for the ziggurat in The Kingdoms, translated into the simplified geometric language of the drawing while remaining rooted in the monumental architecture of Babylon.
One of the most important sources is the Nebuchadnezzar II stele associated with Etemenanki. It depicts Nebuchadnezzar beside the stepped tower and preserves a plan of the sanctuary at its summit. The stele grounds the ziggurat not merely as a symbol of Babel, but as a real monument of imperial Babylon. Daniel’s exile takes place within that world: a city whose architecture embodied the power, ambition, and religious imagination of the empire that had conquered Jerusalem.
The texture of Babylon is drawn horizontally across the composition. The ziggurat strives upward, but the kingdom itself spreads outward. Its ambition is vertical, reaching toward heaven, while its power is expressed horizontally through land, cities, conquest, and empire. The tension is intentional: Babylon seeks to ascend, yet it remains bound to the earth and continues to sprawl across it.
TWO KINGDOMS
Ultimately, The Kingdoms is about Daniel living between two realities. Around him is Babylon, magnificent, terrifying, and apparently permanent. Through the window is Jerusalem, distant, conquered, and seemingly lost. Beyond both is the Kingdom Daniel is gradually allowed to see: a Kingdom not constructed by kings, sustained by armies, or made by human hands.
Daniel's faithfulness in Babylon is possible because Babylon is never the largest reality in his imagination. He can serve within it without believing that it is ultimate. He can watch kings rise and fall without confusing their power with permanence. He can continue praying toward a ruined Jerusalem because the promises of God are not dependent upon what Daniel can currently see.
Kingdoms come and go, but God's Kingdom comes.
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The Kingdoms is available as an archival fine-art print studio and collector's editions.
