What would ancient Oriental kings do to people who failed to fulfill their requests?
Ancient Oriental kings were ruthless: if a person could not fulfill what the king asked, the king would put him to death. Nebuchadnezzar, enraged that his magicians could not recover his dream, commanded all the wise men of Babylon to be destroyed.
Les teaches that these ancient Oriental kings, and he imagines they had not changed all that much, were ruthless. If somebody couldn't fulfill what they asked him to fulfill, they'd put him to death. In Daniel 2, Nebuchadnezzar was all shook up from a nightmare and demanded the magicians tell him not only the interpretation of the dream but what the dream was. When they could not recover the dream, the king was angry and very furious; he commanded to destroy all the wise men of Babylon. The decree went forth that the wise men should be slain, and Daniel and his fellows were sought because they were in the same kettle of fish as far as Nebuchadnezzar was concerned.