much, many, great: a lot of something, measuring how much there is rather than how high it ranks
One Aramaic word here does the work of several English ones. It measures quantity and degree: how large, how many, how strongly. English versions swap between "great", "much", "many", "greatly" and "very", so the same word disappears behind a different English word almost every time it appears.
The uses shade into one another rather than dividing sharply:
- Something is great when it is big or lavish, like the towering statue Nebuchadnezzar saw in his dream.
- Something is plentiful when there is simply a lot of it, like the fruit on the world tree, or the years the temple had already stood when the elders wrote to Persia.
- Someone is greatly something when a feeling runs high, like the king who was overjoyed to find Daniel alive in the lions' pit.
It is worth keeping apart from the other Aramaic word for great (רַב), which ranks a person or thing above others: a chief officer, a great king, the great God. That word answers the question "how important?"; this one answers "how much?" The two sit side by side in Daniel 2:31, where a single statue is both huge and imposing, and in Daniel 2:48, where the king hands Daniel gifts that are both grand (רַבְרַב) and plentiful.
Because it is a measuring word, it passes no judgment on what it measures. It can describe honors heaped on a wise man, and in the very next vision it can describe the flesh a predatory beast is told to devour.