Nebuchadnezzar's Second Dream (Daniel 4)

Daniel's friend King Nebuchadnezzar has a dream about a large magnificent tree.  An angel descends from heaven and orders the tree to be cut down.  The stump of the tree is to remain and live among the animals until seven times pass.

This upsets King Nebuchadnezzar who assembles his usual advisors to interpret it.  Eventually, it is Daniel's turn.  Daniel tells Nebuchadnezzar that the king will lose his sanity for seven years and he will live among the animals.  After this time, the king will acknowledge God and both his sanity and kingdom will be restored.

I am unaware of any other time in the Bible where God takes away people's free will like this.  We will encounter demoniacs in the New Testament who have lost their free will, but this is different. 

A practical question emerges - if the king loses his free will, how can he acknowledge God?  It would seem like it should be a free acknowledgement of God to count.  A few possibilities come to me:

1.  The animals already acknowledge God and this is a natural fruit of being an animal.  It was only at seven years where God allowed him to speak like a human and acknowledge God.

2.  At seven years, God will give a taste of free will back to him.  At that point, he will see the mess of what his body has become, remember what Daniel said, and then understand.

There is also an interesting nuance in the language in the chapter.  It appears to be structured like this:

Verses 1-3 - Nebuchadnezzar praises God in the first person.  He is speaking from personal belief and conviction that God is "Most High".

Verses 4-27 - Nebuchadnezzar speaks of the dream and interacting with Daniel in the first person.  He also quotes himself and refers to Daniel as being filled with the spirits of the gods.  Here, there is no indication that he believes God is "Most High".  However, he is quoting himself.

Verses 28-33 - Nebuchadnezzar becomes like an animal.  The language is in the third person.  

Verses 34-37 - Nebuchadnezzar's sanity is restored and he praises God as the "King of Heaven".  The language is now in the first person.

I think Nebuchadnezzar wrote all of chapter 4.  Most of it is in the first person from his perspective with the exception of the break where he becomes an animal.  There, he is no longer himself and takes no ownership of what happened.  He can only talk about it in the third person because it was so different than his normal life and in fact, it was not his conscious state.

Similarly, the language about God takes a similar journey.  It begins and ends with a reflection about the sovereignty of God.  What he states in the middle reflects the idea that God is one of many gods, but he is quoting himself in the past tense.  Rather, chapter 4 is his own spiritual journey.  It begins with where he is now and then explores how he got there.