The dream and its interpretation had been fulfilled. The mighty tree had been cut down. The promised judgment had come as the Most High had decreed. Nebuchadnezzar had learned that he lived in a moral universe and what he had sowed that very thing he now reaped. How long that period was we do not know.
Some ancient writers consider it to have been for seven years.
When he confessed his sins, a Jew of the exile explained matters to him. The writer of this fragment, it would seem, has confused matters, attributing to Nabonidus the illness of Nebuchadnezzar. All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing. He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. It is a kind of primitive press release.