The LORD told Jeremiah to hide large stones in the mortar in the pavement where Nebuchadnezzar's throne would be set before directing him to tell Judah of His mission to send the king the cleanse Egypt.
He defeated Egypt. (Jeremiah 46:13)
He installed Zedekiah king of Judah, but his opposition led to the Babylonian army sieging Jerusalem, pursuit and overtooking of Zedekiah in the plains of Jericho, and bringing of him to Nebuchadnezzar at Riblah in the land of Hamath to slaughter his sons in front of him, put out his eyes, and was imprisoned in Babylon until death.
(Jeremiah 52:1-11, The ESV Study BibleTM, English Standard Version (ESV) by Crossway Bibles, 2007. Page 1369)
Babylonian captivity of Judah
In 586, Nebuchadnezzar conquered Judah, and the Neo-Babylonians took the elite class of the Judeans into the Babylonian Empire. (Hillsdale College - Ancient Christianity)
Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon carried away Jeconiah king of Judah with the Jewish captives, including Mordecai. (Esther 2:5-6)
Dream
(Daniel 2:31-33)
The image in the dream clearly depicts the different layers between heaven and earth, with upper portions rare, supple, and bright, and lower portions common, hard, and obscure and presented in a pyramid shape (perhaps a man in a robe).
(The Language of Creation: Cosmic Symbolism in Genesis - A Commentary by Matthieu Pageau, 2018. Pages 39-42)
In Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, the statue itself corresponds to the individual scale of interpretation because it is a human figure with its body parts. The head is the source of breath and language for the body, so it is the brightest and rarest metals. The lower levels are sources of power (arms) and support (legs), so they are harder and more common metals.
Because of analogies between the different levels of human organization, Daniel interprets the individual imagery of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream at an intercommunal scale. The series of empires interpreted gradually become less coherent as they grow in power and size. The first empire starts with a high degree of meaning and a low degree of corporeality, but the empires that succeed increase in corporeality at the price of their spiritual coherence.
It could be interpreted communally with a clear analogy with the degree of authority and power: priests, nobles, merchants, and laborers.
(The Language of Creation: Cosmic Symbolism in Genesis - A Commentary by Matthieu Pageau, 2018. Pages 75-76)