Daniel 2:21
He changes the times and the seasons; he removes kings, and sets up kings; he gives wisdom to the wise, and knowledge to those who have understanding;
WEB
And he changeth the times and the seasons: he removeth kings, and setteth up kings: he giveth wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding:
KJV
What Daniel 2:21 means
In a prayer from exile, Daniel says it is the God of a conquered people, not the empire's gods, who raises rulers up and brings them down, and who gives real wisdom. The great turning points of history belong to God.
Daniel 2:21 sits inside a short prayer of praise. God has just shown Daniel, in a night vision, the dream that was terrifying Babylon's king, a mystery whose solution was about to decide whether every royal advisor lived or died. Before Daniel goes in to explain it, he blesses God in these words.
The setting is exile. Judah had been conquered and its people deported to Babylon, the superpower of the sixth century BCE. To anyone living under that empire, the claim is daring: the God of a defeated, captive nation, not Babylon's own gods, is the one who "removes kings and sets up kings." Empires looked permanent. The verse calls them temporary.
A detail lost in English: this part of Daniel is written in Aramaic, the international language of diplomacy, rather than Hebrew. The truth about who really governs the nations is spoken in the empire's own tongue. And "times and seasons" is not about weather or the calendar. The Aramaic words mean epochs and appointed eras, the great hinges of history.
Today the verse anchors the idea of God's sovereignty over history. It steadies the powerless, since no regime is final, and unsettles the powerful, who hold authority only on loan. Its closing line adds that real wisdom is given, never self-made.