This Aramaic word covers the whole idea of kingship: the realm a king rules, the royal power he holds, and the stretch of time he reigns. It is a key word of the Aramaic chapters of Daniel, where kingdoms rise and fall.
Daniel's visions line up the kingdoms of the world, one giving way to the next, to make a single point by contrast: every human kingdom is temporary.
Over against them stands the kingdom God sets up, which will never be destroyed and is shared with his holy ones. This everlasting kingdom is the hope the book drives toward, and it feeds directly into the New Testament's "kingdom of God."
Nuances
1aa kingdom or realm, including the world-empires pictured in Daniel's visions.
the one word also names the right to rule and the office a king holds, not only a place: when the writing on the wall says God has numbered this word, it is the king's hold on power that is ending, not a stretch of land.Dan 5:26
Both
both name the realm and people a king rules over, as with the world-empires of Daniel's visions.Dan 2:39Dan 7:23
Only kingdom
English "kingdom" pictures a bounded territory with borders, but here the same word names a rule that breaks every other realm and fills the whole earth, which is not a parcel of land at all.
Can mean royal power itself, a thing handed over, taken away, and passed to another people: the God of heaven "has given you the kingdom", then "the kingdom has departed from you", it is "numbered and finished", and "divided and given to the Medes and Persians".Dan 2:37Dan 4:31Dan 5:26Dan 5:28
Can mean a span of time, one king's "reign", which is how events get dated: the second year, the sixth year, or the years in which Daniel prospered.Ezr 4:24Ezr 6:15Dan 6:28
Names whole sovereign empires that rise and replace one another, so its plural means separate world powers rather than the parts of one realm: a second after you, a third, a fourth unlike all the rest, out of which ten kings arise.Dan 2:39Dan 2:40Dan 7:23Dan 7:24
Stretches past any borders at all: God's own rule, which lasts from generation to generation and cannot be destroyed, and human rule as a whole, which the Most High gives to whomever he chooses.Dan 4:3Dan 4:34Dan 7:14Dan 4:17Dan 5:21
Names the entire realm as one whole, the total that the districts add up to: satraps are posted "in all the kingdom", and one man can be set over "the whole kingdom".Dan 6:1Dan 6:3
Works as "royal" when attached to another noun, describing what belongs to kingship: the royal palace, a house built for royalty, the throne of a king's rule.Dan 4:29Dan 4:30Dan 5:20
Both
Both name territory a king governs through appointees, so either can be the sphere within which an exile is promoted: Daniel is put over the whole province of Babylon, and later over the whole kingdom of Darius.Dan 2:48Dan 6:3
Both are staffed by the same class of imperial officers, the satraps, prefects and governors who are gathered as the officials of the provinces and who also confer as the officials of the kingdom.Dan 3:2Dan 6:7
Always one administered district inside somebody else's empire, so it is normally tied to the region it covers: "the province of Babylon", "Judah the province", "the province of Media".Dan 3:1Ezr 5:8Ezr 6:2
It is run by an appointed administrator, never by a king of its own: Daniel is set over the whole province of Babylon, the three Judeans he nominates handle its business, and they are later promoted within it.Dan 2:48Dan 2:49Dan 3:30
In the plural it counts up the many districts that one realm is carved into, all of whose officers a single king can summon at once, and which a king stands to lose when a rebellious city is left standing.Dan 3:2Dan 3:3Ezr 4:15
It is a stretch of ground on the map: people travel to it, documents are found in it, and a collection is gathered across the whole of it.Ezr 5:8Ezr 6:2Ezr 7:16
malkhu in the other biblical languages
מַלְכוּתHebrew“royalty”the Hebrew word for kingship or royalty, of which this is the Aramaic counterpart.
βασιλείαGreek“kingdom”the Greek word for kingdom, the New Testament's "kingdom of God" that this everlasting-kingdom hope feeds into.
In Daniel and Ezra it names concrete human empires that rise and fall in succession, the Babylonian and Persian realms pictured as metals and beasts.Dan 2:39Dan 2:40Dan 7:23
It also denotes the royal power and dominion an actual king wields over his realm, the office and authority that can be given, taken away, or restored.Dan 4:31Dan 5:18Dan 5:28
Both
Both name God's everlasting, indestructible kingdom set over against every earthly rule: in Daniel the kingdom that shall never be destroyed, in the New Testament the kingdom that finally stands when the kingdoms of this world become God's.Dan 2:44Dan 7:14Rev 11:15Heb 12:28
Both can mean a king's domain and dominion, the realm and the right to rule it, so that the Greek term is the natural counterpart for the Aramaic idea of a kingship that is granted by God.Dan 4:17Luk 1:33
In the New Testament the word is overwhelmingly the reign of God breaking into the present: something a person enters, receives, or seeks, more an active rule than a patch of land.Mat 6:33Mrk 1:15Jhn 3:5
It is the standard term for God's own kingship, the rule that comes near in Jesus and is prayed for as God's will done on earth.Mat 4:17Mat 6:10Luk 17:21
What scholars say about malkhu
The Biblical Aramaic lexica (HALOT's Aramaic section, BDB's Aramaic section, and Vogt) give one word spanning kingdom, kingship, and reign. Commentators highlight the everlasting-kingdom texts (Daniel 2:44; 7:14, 27) as a bridge from these visions to the New Testament's kingdom of God.