Curtius, viii. 5. 11. With this cf. Plutarch, Themist. c. 27. And that this custom, which even Alexander the Great (Curt. vi. 6. 2) followed, was derived from the Medes, appears from the statement of Herodotus, i. 99, that Dejoces irspl txvTou oe/xvvuv, withdrew his royal person from the view of men. The ancient Egyptians and Ethiopians paid divine honours to their kings, according to Diod. Sic. i. 90, iii. 3, 5; and it is well known that the Koman emperors required that their images should be worshipped with religious veneration.
the edict; for a discontinuance of it on account of that law would have been a denying of the faith and a sinning against God. On this his enemies had reckoned. They secretly watched him, and immediately reported his disregard of the king's command. In ver. 11 the place where he was wont to pray is more particularly described, in order that it might be shown how they could observe him. In the upper chamber of his house (l"P?y> Ilebr. HJpJJj 1 Kings xvii. 19, 2 Sam. xix. 1), which was wont to be resorted to when one wished to be undisturbed, e.g. wished to engage in prayer (cf. Acts i. 13, x. 9), the windows were open, i.e. not closed with lattice- work (cf. Ezek. xl. 16), opposite to, i.e. in the direction of, Jerusalem. TO does not refer to Daniel: he had opened windows, but to A??!?? * his house had open windows. If TO referred to Daniel, then the mn following would be superfluous. The custom of turning in prayer toward Jerusalem originated after the building of the temple at Jerusalem as the dwelling-place of Jehovah; cf. 1 Kings viii. 33, 35, Ps. v. 8, xxviii. 2. The offering of prayer three times a day, — namely, at the third, sixth, and ninth hour, i.e. at the time of the morning and the evening sacrifices and at mid-day, — was not first introduced by the men of the Great Synagogue, to whom the uncritical rabbinical tradition refers all ancient customs respecting the worship of God, nor is the opinion of v. Leng., Hitz., and others, that it is not of later origin than the time of the Median Darius, correct; but its origin is to be traced back to the times of David, for we find the first notice of it in Ps. lv. 18. If Daniel thus continued to offer prayer daily (8^0= ^nP? ch. ii. 23) at the open window, directing his face toward Jerusalem, after the promulgation of the law, just as he had been in the habit of doing before it, then there was neither ostentation nor pharisaic hypocrisy, nor scorn and a tempting of God, as Kirmss imagines; but his conduct was the natural result of his fear of God and of his religion, under the influence of which he offered prayers not to make an outward show,* for only secret spies could observe him when so engaged. *"[ 73P"73 does not mean altogether so as (Rosenmiiller, v. Leng., Maur., Hitzig), but, as always, on this account because, because. Because he always did thus, so now he continues to do it.
Ver. 12 (11). When Daniel's enemies had secretly observed him praying, they rushed into the house while he was offering his supplications, that they might apprehend him in the very act and be able to bring him to punishment. That the act of watching him is not particularly mentioned, since it is to be gathered from the context, does not make the fact itself doubtful, if one only does not arbitrarily, with Hitzig, introduce all kinds of pretences for throwing suspicion on the narrative; as e.g. by inquiring whether the 122 satraps had placed themselves in ambush; why Daniel had not guarded against them, had not shut himself in; and the like. ^•H?? as ver. 7, to rush forward, to press in eagerly, here " shows the greatness of the zeal with which they performed their business " (Kran.).
Ver. 13 (12). They immediately accused him to the king. Reminding the king of the promulgation of the prohibition, they showed him that Daniel, one of the captive Jews, had not regarded the king's command, but had continued during the thirty days to pray to his own God, and thus had violated the law. In this accusation they laid against Daniel, we observe that his accusers do not describe him as one standing in office near to the king, but only as one of a foreign nation, one of the Jewish exiles in Babylon, in order that they may thereby bring his conduct under the suspicion of being a political act of rebellion against the royal authority.
Ver. 15 (14). But the king, wTho knew and highly valued (cf. ver. 2) Daniel's fidelity to the duties of his office, was so sore displeased by the accusation, that he laboured till the going down of the sun to effect his deliverance. The verb BW3 has an intransitive meaning: to be evil, to be displeased, and is not joined into one sentence with the subject N?^?, which stands here absolute; and the subject to *nft# BW3 is undefined: it, namely, the matter displeased him; cf. Gen. xxi. 11.?2 DK> corresponds to the Hebr. 2? JW, Prov. xxii. 17, to lay to heart. The word 72y cor, mens, is unknown in the later Chaldee, but is preserved in the Syr.)lo
Ver. 16 (15). When the king could not till the going down of the sun resolve on passing sentence against Daniel, about this time his accusers gathered themselves together into his presence for the purpose of inducing him to carry out the threatened punishment, reminding him that, according to the law of the Medes and Persians, every prohibition and every command which the king decreed (O*0J*), i.e. issued in a legal form, could not be changed, i.e. could not be recalled. There being no way of escape out of the difficulty for the king, he had to give the command that the punishment should be inflicted, and Daniel was cast into the den of lions, ver. 17 (16). On the Aphel Vivn, and the pass, form (ver. 18) rWVHj see at ch. iii. 13. The execution of the sentence was carried out, according to Oriental custom, on the evening of the day in which the accusation was made; this does not, however, imply that it was on the evening in which, at the ninth hour, he had prayed, as Hitzig affirms, in order that he may thereby make the whole matter improbable. In giving up Daniel to punishment, the king gave expression to the wish, " May thy God, whom thou servest continually, deliver thee!" not "Pie will deliver thee;" for Darius could not have this confidence, but he may have had the feeble hope of the possibility of the deliverance which from his heart he wished,, inasmuch as he may have heard of the miracles of the Almighty God whom Daniel served in the days of Belshazzar and Nebuchadnezzar.
Ver. 18 (17). After Daniel had been thrown into the lions' den, its mouth was covered with a flat stone, and the stone was sealed with the king's seal and that of the great officers of state, that nothing might change or be changed («??"J,3 ^V) concerning Daniel (^3V? affair, matter), not that the device against Daniel might not be frustrated (Hav.,v. Leng., Maur., Klief.). This thought required the stat. emphaL Krw3V? and also does not correspond with the application of a double seal. The old translator Theodot. is correct in his rendering: oVo)? fir) aWoicoOf) irpa^fia iv ra> Aavcr/X, and the LXX. paraphrasing: oVa)? fir) air avrwv (fjL6<yiGTdvcov) dpdfj 6 AavirjX, i) 6 jSa<rCkev<; avrbv avaaTrdarj etc tov XafCfcov. Similarly also Ephr. Syr. and others.
The den of lions is designated by N33, which the Targg. use for the Hebr. "via, a cistern. From this v. Leng., Maur., and Plitzig infer that the writer had in view a funnel-shaped cistern dug out in the ground, with a moderately small opening or mouth from above, which could be covered with a stone, so that for this one night the lions had to be shut in, while generally no stone lay on the opening. The pit also into which Joseph, the type of Daniel, was let down was a cistern (Gen. xxxvii. 24), and the mouth of the cistern was usually covered with a stone (Gen. xxix. 3; Lam. iii. 53). It can hence scarcely be conceived how the lions, over which no angel watched, could have remained in such a subterranean cavern covered with a stone. " The den must certainly have been very capacious if, as it appears, 122 men with their wives and children could have been thrown into it immediately after one another (ver. 25); but this statement itself only shows again the" deficiency of every view of the matter," — and thus the whole history is a fiction fabricated after the type of the history of Joseph! But these critics who speak thus have themselves fabricated the idea of the throwing into the den of 122 men with women and children — for the text states no number — in order that they might make the whole narrative appear absurd; cf. what we have observed regarding this supposition at p. 208.
We have no account by the ancients of the construction of lions' dens. Ge. Host, in his work on Fez and Morocco, p. 77, describes the lions' dens as they have been found in Morocco. According to his account, they consist of a large square cavern under the earth, having a partition-wall in the middle of it, which is furnished with a door, which the keeper can open and close from above. By throwing in food they can entice the lions from the one chamber into the other, and then, having shut the door, they enter the vacant space for the purpose of cleaning it. The cavern is open above, its mouth being surrounded by a wall of a yard and a half high, over which one can look down into the den. This description agrees perfectly with that which is here given in the text regarding the lions' den. Finally, **?? does not denote common cisterns. In Jer. xli. 7, 9, N^15 (Hebr. "lis) is a subterranean chamber into which seventy dead bodies were cast; in Isa. xiv. 15, the place of Sheol is called 212. No reason, therefore, exists for supposing that it is a funnel-formed cistern. The mouth (Dia) of the den is not its free opening above by which one may look down into it, but an opening made in its side, through which not only the lions were brought into it, but by which also the keepers entered for the purpose of cleansing the den and of attending to the beasts, and could reach the door in the partition-wall (cf. Host, p. 270). This opening was covered with a great flat stone, which was sealed, the free air entering to the lions from above. This also explains how, according to ver. 21 (20) ff., the king was able to converse with Daniel before the removal of the stone (namely, by the opening above).
Ver. 19 (18). Then the king went to his palace, and passed the night fasting: neither were any of his concubines brought before him; and his sleep went from him. The king spent a sleepless night in sorrow on account of Daniel, rrtp, used adverbially, in fasting, i.e. without partaking of food in the evening. Hjn^ concu-
( hi the following morning (ver. 20) the king early, at the dawn of day, and went to the den of lions, and with lamentable voice called to him, feebly hoping that Daniel might be delivered by his God whom he continually i Daniel answered the king, thereby showing that he had been preserved; whereupon the king was ling glad. The future or imperf. DAP] (ver. 20) is not to be interpreted with Kranichfeld hypothetically, he thought I "n'ty> seeing he did actually rise early, but is nsed instead of the ]>erf. to place the clause in relation to the following, meaning: the king, it morning dawn, went hastily by the early light, N";:-, (it the shining of the Unlit, serves for a nearer determination of the inartDBJa, at the morning dawn, namely, n as the first rays of the rising sun appeared. The predicate the living God is occasioned by the i servation of life, which the king regarded as possible, and probably was made known to the king in previous conversations with Daniel; cf. Ps. xlii. 3, lxxxiv. 3, 1 Sam. xvii. 36, etc.
Ver. 22 (21) ff. In his answer Daniel declares his innocence, which God had recognised, and on that account had sent His ancel (cf. Ps. xxxiv. 8, xci. 11 ff.) to shut the mouths of the lions; cf. Heb. x. 33. *]W, and also (concluding from the innocence actually testified to by God) before the king, i.e. according to the king's judgment, he had done nothing wrong or hurtful. By his transgression of the edict he had not done evil against the king's person. This Daniel could the more certainly say, the more he perceived how the king was troubled and concerned about his preservation, because in Daniel's transgression he himself had seen no conspiracy against his person, but only fidelity toward his own God. The king hereupon immediately gave command that he should be brought out of the den of lions. The Aph. nijD3n and the Hoph. \>Br\ do not come from pM, but from pbp - the 2 is merely compensative. P?D? to mount up, Aph. to bring out; by which, however, we are not to understand a being drawn up by ropes through the opening of the den from above. The bringing out was by the opened passage in the side of the den, for wdiich purpose the stone with the seals was removed. To make the miracle of his preservation manifest, and to show the reason of it, ver. 24 (23) states that Daniel was found without any injury, because he had trusted in his God.
Daniel thought to bring upon him fell upon themselves. The king commanded that they should be cast into the den of lions, where immediately, before they had reached the bottom, they were seized and torn to pieces by the lions. On *niy|j3 75s see at ch. iii. 8. By the accusers we are not (with Hitzig) to think of the 120 satraps together with the two chief presidents, but only of a small number of the special enemies of Daniel who had concerned themselves with the matter. The condemning to death of the wives and children alon^ with the men was in accordance with Persian custom, as is testified by Herodotus, iii. 119, Amm. Marcell. xxiii. 6. 81, and also with the custom of the Macedonians in the case of treason (Curtius, vi. ii.), but was forbidden in the law of Moses; cf. Deut. xxiv. 16.
As Nebuchadnezzar, after the wonderful deliverance of Daniel's friends from the burning fiery furnace, issued an edict to all the nations of his kingdom forbidding them on pain of death from doing any injury to these men of God (ch. iii. 29), so now Darius, in consequence of this wonderful preservation of Daniel in the den of lions, gave forth an edict commanding all the nations of his whole kingdom to fear and reverence Daniel's God. But as Nebuchadnezzar by his edict, so also Darius, did not depart from the polytheistic standpoint. Darius acknowledged the God of Daniel, indeed, as the living God, whose kingdom and dominion were everlasting, but not as the only true God, and he commanded Him to be reverenced only as a God who does wonders in heaven and on earth, without prejudice to the honour of his own gods and of the gods of his subjects. Both of these kings, it is true, raised the God of Judea above all other gods, and praised the everlasting duration of His dominion (see ch. iii. 29, 32 [iv. 2 ] f., and ch. iv. 31 ff., vi. 27 f.), but they did not confess Him as the one only God. This edict, then, shows neither the conversion of Darius to the worship of the God of the Jews, nor does it show intolerance toward the gods of his subjects. On ver. 26 (25) cf. ch. iii. 31 (iv. 1). As Nebuchadnezzar, so also Darius, regarded his kingdom as a world-kingdom. On 27a (26) cf. ch. iii. 29. The reverence which all the nations were commanded to show to Daniel's God is described in the same words as is the fear and reverence which the might and greatness of Nebuchadnezzar inspired in all the nations that were subject to him (ch. v. 19), which has led Ilitzig justly to remark, that the words &[}?*? I w3 f\?0 (they must worship his God) are not used. God is described as living (cf. ver. 21) and eternal, with which is connected the praise of the everlasting duration of His dominion and of His rule in heaven and on earth; cf. ch. ii. 44 and iii. 33 (iv. 3). The "^ after WJwB is not a conjunction, but is the relative, and the expression briefly denotes that His kingdom is a kingdom which is not destroyed; cf. ch. iv. 31 (34). NSiD IV, to the end — not merely of all heathen kingdoms which arise on the earth, i.e. to their final destruction by the kingdom of the Messiah, ch. ii. 44 (Kranichfeld), for there is no thought of the Messianic kingdom here at all, but to the end of all things, to eternity. In ver. 28 (27) this God is lauded as the deliverer and wonder-worker, because in the case of Daniel He had showed Himself as such; cf. ch. iii. 32. T \09 from the hand, i.e. from the power of; cf. Ps. xxii. 21.
Ver. 29 (28) closes the narrative in the same way as that regarding the deliverance of Daniel's friends (ch. iii. 30); only it is further stated, that Daniel continued in office till the reign of the Persian Cyrus. By the pronoun iW, this Daniel, the identity of the person is accentuated: the same Daniel, whom his enemies wished to destroy, prospered. From the repetition of rwppa before ^"}i3 it does not follow that Daniel separates the Persian kingdom from the Median; for 127D here does not mean kingdom, but dominion, i.e. reign. The succession of the reign* of Cyrus the Persian to that of Darius the Median does not show the diversity of the two kingdoms, but only that the rulers of the kingdom were of different races.
CHAP. VII. THE VISION OF THE FOUR WORLD-KINGDOMS; THE JUDGMENT; AND THE KINGDOM OF THE HOLY GOD.
After presenting to view (ch. iii.-vi.) in concrete delineation, partly in the prophetically significant experiences of Daniel and his friends, and partly in the typical events which befell the worldrulers, the position and conduct of the representatives of the worldpower in relation to the worshippers of the living God, there follows in this chapter the record of a vision seen by Daniel in the first year of Belshazzar. In this vision the four world-monarchies which were shown to Nebuchadnezzar in a dream in the form of an image are represented under the symbol of beasts; and there is a further unfolding not only of the nature and character of the four successive world-kingdoms, but also of the everlasting Innerdom of God established by the judgment of the world-kingdoms. With this vision, recorded like the preceding chapters in the Chaldean language, the first part of this work, treating of the development of the world-power in its four principal forms, is brought to a conclusion suitable to its form and contents.
This chapter is divided, according to its contents, into two equal portions. Vers. 1-14 contain the vision, and vers. 15-28 its interpretation. After an historical introduction it is narrated how Daniel saw (vers. 2-8) four great beasts rise up one after another out of the storm-tossed sea; then the judgment of God against the fourth beast and the other beasts (vers. 9-12); and finally (vers. 13, 14), the delivering up of the kingdom over all nations to the Son of man, who came with the clouds of heaven. Being deeply moved (ver. 15) by what he saw, the import of the vision is first made known to him in general by an angel (vers. 16-18), and then more particularly by the judgment (vers. 19-26) against the fourth beast, and its destruction, and by the setting up of the kingdom of the saints of the Most High (ver. 27). The narrative of the vision is brought to a close by a statement of the impression made by this divine revelation on the mind of the prophet (ver. 28). 1
1 According to the modern critics, this vision also is to be regarded as belonging to the time of Antiochus Epiphanes; and, as von Lengerke says, the representation of the Messianic kingdom, (vers. 13 and 14) is the only prophetic portion of it, all the other parts merely announcing what had already occurred. According to Hitzig, this dream-vision must have been composed (cf. ver. 25, viii. 14) shortly before the consecration of the temple (1 Mace. iv. 52, 59). On the other hand, Kranichfeld remarks, that if this chapter were composed during the time of the persecution under Antiochus Epiphanes, " then it would show that its author was in the greatest ignorance as to the principal historical dates of his own time;" and he adduces in illustration the date in ver. 25, and the failure of the attempts of the opponents of its genuineness to authenticate in history the ten horns which grew up before the eleventh horn, and the three kingdoms (vers. 7 f., 20). According to ver. 25, the blaspheming of the Most High, the wearing out of the saints, and the changing of all religious ordinances continue for three and a half times, which are taken for three and a half years, after the expiry of which an end will be made, by means of the judgment, to the heathen oppression. But these three and a half years are not historically proved to be the period of the religious persecution under Antiochus Epiphanes. " In both of the books of the Maccabees (1 Mace. i. 54;
shazzar," which cannot, as is evident, mean "shortly before the reign of Belshazzar" (Hitz.), but that Daniel received the following revelation in the course of the first year of the reign of this king, stands related to the contents of the revelation. This vision accords not only in many respects with the dream of Nebuchadnezzar (ch. ii.), but has the same subject. This subject, however, the representation of the world-power in its principal forms, is differently given in the two chapters. In ch. ii. it is represented according to its whole character as an image of a man whose different parts consist of different metals, and in ch. vii. under the figure of four beasts which arise one after the other out of the sea. In the former its destruction is represented by a stone breaking the image in pieces, while in the latter it is effected by a solemn act of judgment. This further difference also is to be observed, that in this chapter, the first, but chiefly the fourth world-kingdom, in its development and relation to the people of God, is much more clearly exhibited than in ch. ii. These differences have their principal reason in the difference of the recipients of the divine revelation: Nebuchadnezzar, the founder of the world-power, saw this power in its imposing greatness and glory; while Daniel, the prophet of God, saw it in its opposition to God in the form of ravenous beasts of prey. Nebuchadnezzar had his dream in the second year of his reign, when he had just founded his world-monarchy;
2 Mace. x. 5) the period of ihe desecration of the temple (according to v. Leng.) lasted only three years; and Josephus, Ant. xii. 7. 6, speaks also of three years, reckoning from the year 145 Seleucid. and the 25th day of the month Kisleu, when the first burnt-offering was offered on the idol-altar (1 Mace. i. 57), to the 25th day of Kisleu in the year 148 Seleucid., when for the first time sacrifice was offered (1 Mace. iv. 52) on the newly erected altar." But since the fihihvypu, epn^ojasas was, according to 1 Mace. i. 54, erected on the 15th day of Kisleu in the year 145 Seleucid., ten days before the first offering of sacrifice upon it, most reckon from the 15th Kisleu, and thus make the period three years and ten days. Hitzig seeks to gain a quarter of a year more by going back in his reckoning to the arrival in Judea (1 Mace. i. 29, cf. 2 Mace. v. 24) of the chief collector of tribute sent by Apollonius. C. von Lengerke thinks that the period of three and a half years cannot be reckoned with historical accuracy. Hilgenfeld would reckon the commencement of this period from some other event in relation to the temple, which, however, has not been recorded in history. — From all this it is clear as noonday that the three and a half years are not historically identified, and thus that the Maccabean pseudo-Daniel was ignorant of the principal events of his time. Just as little are these critics able historically to identify the ten kings (vers. 7 and 20), as we shall show in an Excursus on the four world-kingdoms at the close of this chapter.
while Daniel had his vision of the world-kingdoms and of the judgment against them in the first year of Belshazzar, i.e. Evilmerodach, the son and successor of Nebuchadnezzar, when with the death of the golden head of the world-monarchy its glory began to fade, and the spirit of its opposition to God became more manifest. This revelation was made to the prophet in a dream-vision by night upon his bed. Compare ch. ii. 2S. Immediately thereafter Daniel wrote down the principal parts of the dream, that it might be publicly proclaimed — the sum of the things (P?p &$>").) which he had seen in the dream. "i£K, to say, to relate, is not opposed to 2fi3, to write, but explains it: by means of writing down the vision he said, i.e. reported, the chief contents of the dream, omitting secondary things, e.g. the minute description of the beasts.
With ver. 2 Daniel begins his written report: u Daniel began and said," introduces the matter. KvV>~DJJ "•WJ, visions in (during) the night, cf. ch. ii. 19. Vers. 2 and 3 describe the scene in general. The four winds of heaven break loose upon the great sea, and rage fiercely, so that four great beasts, each diverse from the others, arise out of its bosom. The great sea is not the Mediterranean (Berth., Ges., Hitz., Ewald), for such a geographical reference is foreign to the context. It is the ocean; and the storm on it represents the u tumults of the people," commotions among the nations of the world (Hav., Leng., Hofm., etc.), corresponding to the prophetic comparison found in Jer. xvii. 12, xlvi. 7 f. " Since the beasts represent the forms of the worldpower, the sea must represent that out of which they arise, the whole heathen world " (Hofmann). In the interpretation of the image (ver. 17) Ntjl ft? is explained by WHtf ft?. rt*l means to break forth (Ezek. xxxii. 2), to burst out in storm, not causative, u to make the great sea break forth" (Kran.). The causative meaning is not certainly found either in the Hebrew or the Chaldee. The four winds stand in relation to the four quarters of the heavens; cf. Jer. xlix. 39. Calvin remarks: Mundus similis turbulento mari, quod non agiiatur una procella vel uno venio, sed diver sis vends inter se confligentibus, ac si totum coelum eonspiraret ad motus excitandos. With this, however, the meaning of the words is not exhausted. The four winds of heaven are not merely diversi venti, and their bursting forth is not only an image of a general commotion represented by a storm in the ocean. The winds of the heavens represent the heavenly powers and forces by which God sets the nations of the world in motion; and the number four has a symbolical meaning: that the people of all regions of the earth are moved hither and thither in violent commotion. " CEcumenieal commotions give rise to oecumenical kingdoms" (Kliefoth). As a consequence of the storm on the sea, there arise out of it four fierce beasts, not all at once, but, as vers. 6 and 7 teach, one after another, and each having a different appearance. The diversity of the form of the beasts, inasmuch as they represent kingdoms, is determined beforehand, not only to make it noticeable that the selection of this symbol is not arbitrary but is significant (Havernick), but emphatically to intimate that the vision of different kingdoms is not to be dealt with, as many interpreters seem inclined to do, as one only of different kings of one kingdom.
Vers. 4-8. In these verses there is a description of the four beasts. — Ver. 4. The first beast resembled a lion with eagle's wings. At the entrance to a temple at Birs Nimrud there has been found (Layard, Bab. and Nin.) such a symbolical figure, viz. a winged eagle with the head of a man. There have been found also images of winged beasts at Babylon (Miinter, Relig. der Bab.). These discoveries may be referred to as evidence that this book was composed in Babylon, and also as explaining the Babylonian colouring of the dream. But the representation of nations and kingdoms by the images of beasts is much more widely spread, and affords the prophetic symbolism the necessary analogues and substrata for the vision. Lions and eagles are not taken into consideration here on account of their strength, rapacity, and swiftness, but simply because they are kings among beasts and birds: " The beast rules royally like the lion, and wings its conquering royal flight high over the ol/covfAevn like the eagle" (Kliefoth). This emblem corresponds with the representation of the first kingdom with the golden head (ch. ii.). What the gold is among metals and the head among the members of the body, that the lion is among beasts and the eagle among birds.
After a time Daniel sees a change take place with this beast. The wings, i.e. the feathers by which it flies, are plucked off: it is deprived of its power of flight, so that it can no more fly conquering over the earth, or hover as a ruler over it; i.e. the kingdom will be deprived of the power of conquering, for it will be lifted up from the earth (n^gn is Hoph., cf. ch. iv. 33), and be placed on its feet as a man. The lifting up from the earth does not represent, accordingly, being taken away or blown away from the earth, not the destruction of the Chaldean kingdom (Theodrt., Hieron.,
Raschi, Hitzig, and others), but the raising of it up when lyinc prostrate on the ground to the right attitude of a human being. This change is further described by the words, " a man's heart was given to it," denoting that the beast-nature was transformed to that of a man. The three expressions thus convey the idea, that the lion, after it was deprived of its power of flight, was not only in external appearance raised from the form of a beast to that of a man, but also that inwardly the nature of the beast was ennobled into that of a man. In this description of the change that occurred to the lion there is without doubt a reference to what is said of Nebuchadnezzar in ch. iv.: it cannot, however, be thence concluded, with Hofmann and others, that the words refer directly to Nebuchadnezzar's insanity; for here it is not the king, but the kingdom, that is the subject with reference to whose fate that event in the life of its founder was significant. Forasmuch as it was on account of his haughtiness that madness came upon him, so that he sank down to the level of the beasts of the field, so also for the same reason was his kingdom hindered in its flight over the earth. " Nebuchadnezzar's madness was for his kingdom the plucking off of its wings;" and as when he gave glory to the Most High his reason returned to him, and then for the first time he attained to the true dignity of man, so also was his world-kingdom ennobled in him, although the continued influence of this ennobling may not be perceived from the events in the reign of his son, recorded in ch. v. Besides, there lies herein not only the idea of the superiority of the first wTorld-kingdom over the others, as is represented in ch. ii. by the golden head of the metallic image, but also manifestly the typical thought that the world-kingdom will first be raised to the dignity of manhood when its beast-like nature is taken away. Where this transformation does not take place, or where it is not permanent, there must the kingdom perish. This is the prophetic meaning, for the sake of which that occurrence in the life of the founder of the world-monarchy is here transferred to his kingdom.
Ver. 5. The second beast. — V"i$0 signifies that this beast came first into sight after the lion, which also the predicates rDXUI nntf prove, ^ns expresses the difference from the first beast, ru\jn the order in which it appears. The beast was like a bear. Next to the lion it is the strongest among animals; and on account of its voracity it was called by Aristotle ££>oz/ ira/nifidyov. The words fi^iPH *in"iDE9 present some difficulty. They have been differently explained. The explanation of Rabbi Nathan, " and it established a dominion," with which Kranichfeld also agrees, is not only in opposition to the "in, but is also irreconcilable with the line of thought, in is not the indefinite article, but the numeral; and the thought that the beast established one dominion, or a united dominion, is in the highest degree strange, for the character of a united or compact dominion belongs to the second world-kingdom in no case in a greater degree than to the Babylonian kingdom, and in general the establishing of a dominion cannot properly be predicated of a beast = a kingdom. The old translators (LXX., Theod., Peshito, Saad.) and the rabbis have interpreted the word "1010 in the sense of side, a meaning which is supported by the Targ. Itppj and is greatly strengthened by the Arabic sthar, without our needing to adopt the reading "itpi?, found in several Codd The object to the verb ri^ipn is easily supplied by the context: it raised up, i.e. its both/, on one side. This means neither that it leaned on one side (Ebrard), nor that it stood on its fore feet (Havernick), for the sides of a bear are not its fore and hinder part; but weare to conceive that the beast, resting on its feet, raised up the feet of the one side for the purpose of going forward, and so raised the shoulder or the whole body on that side. But with such a motion of the beast the geographical situation of the kingdom (Geier, Mich., Ros.) cannot naturally be represented, much less can the near approach of the destruction of the kingdom (Hitzig) be signified. Hofmann, Delitzsch, and Kliefoth have found the right interpretation by a reference to ch. ii. and viii. As in ch. ii. the arms on each side of the breast signify that the second kingdom will consist of two parts, and this is more distinctly indicated in ch. viii. by the two horns, one of which rose up after the other, and higher, so also in this verse the double-sidedness of this world-kingdom is represented by the beast lifting itself up on the one side. The Medo-Persian bear, as such, has, as Kliefoth well remarks, two sides: the one, the Median side, is at rest after the efforts made for the erection of the world-kingdom; but the other, the Persian side, raises itself up, and then becomes not only higher than the first, but also is prepared for new rapine. The further expression, it had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth, has also been variously interpreted. That TVpV means ribs, not sides, is as certain as that the ribs in the mouth between the teeth do not denote side-teeth, tusks, or fangs (Saad., Hav.). The rv.'V in the mouth between the teeth are the booty which the bear has seized; according to the undoubted use of the word; cf. Amos iii. 12, Ps. cxxiv. 6, Job xxix. 17, Jer. li. 44. Accordingly, by the ribs we cannot understand either the Persians, Medians, and Babylonians, as the nations that constituted the strength of the kingdom (Ephr. Syr., Hieron., Ros.), or the three Median kings (Ewald), because neither the Medes nor the three Median kings can be regarded as a prey of the Median or Medo- Persian world. The " ribs" which the beast is grinding between its teeth cannot be the peoples who constitute the kingdom, or the kings ruling over it, but only peoples or countries which it has conquered and annexed to itself* The determining of these peoples and countries depends on which kingdom is represented by the bear. Of the interpreters who understand by the bear the Median kingdom, Maurer and Delitzsch refer to the three chief satrapies (ch. vi. 3). Not these, however, but only the lands divided between them, could be regarded as the prey between the teeth of the beast, and then Media also must be excluded; so that the reference of the words to the three satrapies is altogether inadmissible. Hitzig thinks that the reference is to three towns that were destroyed by the Medians, viz. Nineveh, Larissa, and a third which he cannot specify; v. Leng. regards the number three as a round number, by which the voracity of the beast is shown; Kranichfeld understands by the three ribs constituent parts of a whole of an older national confederation already dissolved and broken asunder, of which, however, he has no proof. We see, then, that if the bear is taken as representing the Median kingdom, the three ribs in its mouth cannot be explained. If, on the other hand, the Medo- Persian world-kingdom is intended by the bear, then the three ribs in its mouth are the three kingdoms Babylon, Lydia, and Egypt, which were conquered by the Medo-Persians. This is the view of Hofm., Ebr., Ziind., and Klief. The latter, however, thinks that the number u Three" ought not to be regarded as symbolical, but as forming only the contrast to the number four in ver. 6, and intimating that the second beast will not devour in all the regions of the world, but only on three sides, and will make a threefold and not a fourfold plunder, and therefore will not reach absolute universality. But since the symbolical value of each number is formed from its arithmetical signification, there is no reason here, any more than there is in the analogous passages, ch. viii. 4, 22, to depart wholly from the exact signification.
The last expression of the verse, Arise, devour much flesh, most interpreters regard as a summons to go forth conquering. But this exposition is neither necessary, nor does it correspond to the relative position of the words. The eating much flesh does not form such a contrast to the three ribs in the mouth between the teeth, that it must be interpreted of other flesh than that already held by the teeth with the ribs. It may be very well understood, with Ebrard and Kliefoth, of the consuming of the flesh of the ribs; so that the command to eat much flesh is only an explication of the figure of the ribs held between the teeth, and contains only the thought that the beast must wholly consume the plunder it has seized with its teeth. JThe plur. H9*5 {they spoke) is impersonal, and is therefore not to be attributed to the angel as speaking.
Ver. 6. TJie third beast, which Daniel saw after the second, was like a panther (leopard), which is neither so kingly as the lion nor so strong as the bear, but is like to both in rapacity, and superior to them in the springing agility with which it catches its prey; so that one may say, with Kliefoth, that in the subordination of the panther to the lion and the bear, the same gradation is repeated as that which is found (of the third kingdom) in ch. ii. of the copper (brass). Of the panther it is said, that it had four wings of a fowl and four heads. The representation of the beast with four wings increases the agility of its movements to the speed of the flight of a bird, and expresses the thought that the kingdom represented by that beast would extend itself in flight over the earth; not so royally as Nebuchadnezzar, — for the panther has not eagle's wings, but only the wings of a fowl, — but extending to all the regions of the earth, for it has four wings. At the same time the beast has four heads, not two only, as one might have expected with four wings. The number four thus shows that the heads have an independent signification, and do not stand in relation to the four wings, symbolizing the spreading out of the kingdom into the four quarters of the heavens (Bertholdt, Hav., Kran.). As little do the four wings correspond with the four heads in such a way that by both there is represented only the dividing of the kingdom into four other kingdoms (Hav. Comment., Auberl.). Wings are everywhere an emblem of rapid motion; heads, on the contrary, where the beast signifies a kingdom, are the heads of the kingdom, i.e. the kings or rulers: hence it follows that the four heads of the panther are the four successive Persian kings whom alone Daniel knows (ch. xi. 2). Without regard to the false interpretations of ch. xi. 2 on which this opinion rests, it is to be noticed that the four heads do not rise up one after another, but that they all exist contemporaneously on the body of the beast, and therefore can only represent four cotemporary kings, or signify that this kingdom is divided into four kingdoms. That the four win<rs are mentioned before the four heads, signifies that the kingdom spreads itself over the earth with the speed of a bird's flight, and then becomes a fourfold-kingdom, or divides itself into four kingdoms, as is distinctly shown in ch. viii. 5 ff. — The last statement, and dominion was given to it, corresponds with that in ch. ii. 39, it shall bear rule over all the earth, i.e. shall found an actual and strong world-empire.
Vers. 7 and 8. The fourth beast. — Introduced by a more detailed description, the fourth beast is presented more distinctly before our notice than those which preceded it. Its terribleness and its strength, breaking in pieces and destroying all things, and the fact that no beast is named to which it can be likened, represent it as different from all the beasts that went before. This description corresponds with that of the fourth kingdom denoted by the legs' and the feet of the metallic image of the monarchies (ch. ii.). The iron breaking in pieces all things (ch. ii. 40) is here represented by the great iron teeth with which this monster devoured and brake in pieces. In addition to that, there are also feet, or, as ver. 19 by way of supplement adds, u claws of brass," with which in the mere fury of its rage it destroyed all that remained, i.e. all that it did not devour and destroy with its teeth. 'W1 nwp ton (it was made different) denotes not complete diversity of being, from which Hitz. and Del. conclude that the expression suits only the Macedonian world-kingdom, which as occidental was different in its nature from the three preceding monarchies, which shared among themselves an oriental home and a different form of civilisation and despotic government. For although njiBto expresses more than HJljj (ver. 5), yet the fcn }D NT |W (diverse one from another), spoken (ver. 3) of all the beasts, shows that njJKte cannot be regarded as expressing perfect diversity of being, but only diversity in appearance. The beast was of such terrible strength and destructive ra^e, that the whole animal world could furnish no representative by whose name it might be characterized. It had ten horns, by which its terrible strength is denoted, because a horn is in Scripture always the universal symbol of armed strength. With this the interpretation (ver. 24), that these horns are so many kings or kingdoms, fully corresponds. In the ten horns the ten toes of the image (cli. ii.) are again repeated. The number ten comes into consideration only according to its symbolical meaning of comprehensive and definite totality. That the horns are on the head of the one beast, signifies that the unfolding of its power in the ten kingdoms is not a weakening of its power, but only its full display. Ver. 8. Here a new event is brought under our notice. While continuing to contemplate the horns (the idea of continuance lies in the particip. with the verb, fin.), Daniel sees another little horn rise up among them, which uproots, i.e. destroys, three of the other horns that were already there. He observes that this horn had the eyes of a man, and a mouth which spake great things. The eye and the mouth suggest a human being as represented by the horn. Eyes and seeing with eyes are the symbols of insight, circumspection, prudence. This king will thus excel the others in point of wisdom and circumspection. But why the eyes of a man? Certainly this is not merely to indicate to the reader that the horn signified a man. This is already distinctly enough shown by the fact that eyes, a mouth, and speech were attributed to it. The eyes of a man were not attributed to it in opposition to a beast, but in opposition to a higher celestial being, for whom the ruler denoted by the horn might be mistaken on account of the terribleness of his rule and government; u ne eum putemus juxta quorundam opinionem vel diabolum esse vel dcemonem, sed unum de hominibus, in quo totus Satanas habitaturus sit corporaliter" as Jerome well remarks; cf. Hofmann and Kliefoth. — A mouth w7hich speaketh great things is a vainglorious mouth. I^n^l are presumptuous things, not directly blasphemies (Hav.). In the Apocalypse, xiii. 5, /neydXa and fi\ad(^r]jJLiav are distinguished.
Vers. 9-14. The judgment on the horn speaking great things and on the other beasts, and the delivering of the kingdom to the Son of Man,
After Daniel had for a while contemplated the rising up of the little horn that appeared among the ten horns, the scene changed. There is a solemn sitting in judgment by God, and sentence is pronounced. Seats or chairs were placed. VD17 activ. with an indefinite subject: they were thrown, i.e. they were placed in order quickly, or with a noise. Seats, not merely a throne for God the Judge, but a number of seats for the assembly sitting in judgment with God. That assembly consists neither of the elders of Israel (Iiabb.), nor of glorified men (Hengstb. on Rev. iv. 4), but of angels
(Ps. Ixxxix. 8), who are to be distinguished from the thousands and tens of thousands mentioned in ver. 10; for these do not sit upon thrones, but stand before God as servants to fulfil His commands and execute His judgments. |SE^ PW, one advanced in days, very old, is not the Eternal; for although God is meant, yet Daniel does not see the everlasting God, but an old man, or a man of grey hairs, in whose majestic form God makes Himself visible (cf. Ezek. i. 26). When Daniel represents the true God as an aged man, he does so not in contrast with the recent gods of the heathen which Antiochus Epiphanes wished to introduce, or specially with reference to new gods, as Hitzig and Kran. suppose, by reference to Deut. xxxii. 17 and Jer. xxiii. 23; for God is not called the old God, but appears only as an old man, because age inspires veneration and conveys the impression of majesty. This impression is heightened by the robe with which He is covered, and by the appearance of the hair of His head, and also by the flames of fire which are seen to go forth from His throne. His robe is white as snow, and the hair of His head is white like pure wool; cf. Rev. i. 14. Both are symbols of spotless purity and holiness. Flames of fire proceed from His throne as if it consisted of it, and the wheels of His throne scatter forth fire. One must not take the fire exclusively as a sign of punishment. Eire and the shining of fire are the constant phenomena of the manifestation of God in the world, as the earthly elements most fitting for the representation of the burning zeal with which the holy God not only punishes and destroys sinners, but also purifies and renders glorious His own people; see under Ex. iii. 3. The fire-scattering wheels of the throne show the omnipresence of the divine throne of judgment, the going of the judgment of God over the whole earth (Kliefoth). The fire which engirds with flame the throne of God pours itself forth as a stream from God into the world, consuming all that is sinful and hostile to God in the world, and rendering the people and kingdom of God glorious. ^^?. IP (from before Him) refers to God, and not to His throne. A thousand times a thousand and ten thousand times ten thousand are hyperbolical expressions for an innumerable company of angels, who as His servants stand around God; cf. Deut. xxxiii. 2, Ps. lxviii. 18. The Keri presents the Chaldaic form rs?N for the Hebraizing form of the text D^DpN (thousands), and for \Ef\ the Hebraizing form |321 (myriads), often found in the Targg., to harmonize the plur. form with the singular tel going before.
Forthwith the judgment begins. 3rp M'H we translate, with most interpreters, the judgment sets itself. KJ^j, judgment, abstr. pro concrete*, as judicium in Cicero, Verr. 2. 18. This idea alone is admissible in ver. 26, and here also it is more simple than that defended by Dathe and Kran.: " He " (i.e. the Ancient of days) " sets Himself for judgment," — which would form a pure tautology, since His placing Himself for judgment has been already (ver. 9) mentioned, and nothing would be said regarding the object for which the throne was set. — u The books were opened." The actions of men are recorded in the books, according to which they are judged, some being ordained to eternal life and others condemned to eternal death; cf. Rev. xx. 12, and the notes under Dan. xii. 1. The horn speaking great things is first visited with the sentence of death.
Ver. 11. The construction of this verse is disputed. The second IVJg ntn (/ was seeing) repeats the first for the purpose of carrying on the line of thought broken by the interposed sentence. }HS3 (then) is separated by the accents from the first rw ntn and joined to the clause following: " then on account of the voice of the great words" By this interposed sentence the occasion of the judgment which Daniel sees passed upon the beast is once more brought to view.?\> |£, a on account of the voice of the words" i.e. on account of the loud words, not a from the time of the words, or from the time when the voice of the great words made itself heard" (Klief.). The following expression, *J *W (till that), does not by any means require the temporal conception of }£. To specify the terminus a quo of the vision was as little necessary here as in the **! *W IW] ntn, ver. 9. The temporal conception of IP alters not only the parallelism of the passage vers. 9 and 11, but also the course of thought in the representation, according to which Daniel remains overwhelmed during the vision till all the separate parts of it have passed before his view, i.e. till he has seen the close of the judgment. The first part of this scene consists of the constituting of the judgment (vers. 9, 10), the second of the death and extinction of the horn speaking great things (ver. 11), with which is connected (ver. 12) the mention of the destruction of the dominion of the other beasts. If one considers that the words " / beheld till that " correspond with the like expression in ver. 9, he will not seek, with Kran., in the H *W a reference to a lasting process of judicial execution ending with destruction. The thought is simply this: Daniel remained contemplating the vision till the beast was slain, etc. WWn (the beast) is, by virtue of the explanatory sentence interposed in the first hemistich, the horn speaking great things. The ungodly power of the fourth beast reaches its climax in the blaspheming horn; in this horn, therefore, the beast is slain and destroyed, while its body is given to the burning. N$K fHgv (to the burning fire) corresponds with the Hebr. BW nB^ipp, Isa. lxiv. 10. The burning in the fire is not the mere figure of destruction, specially justified by the thunder-storm which gathered as a veil around the scene of judgment (Kran.), for there is no mention of a storm either in ver. 9 or anywhere else in this entire vision. The supposition that the burning is only the figure of destruction, as e.g. in Isa. ix. 4, is decidedly opposed by the parallel passages, Isa. lxvi. 14, which Daniel had in view, and Hev. xix. 20 and xx. 10, where this prophecy is again taken up, and the judgment is expressed by a being cast into a lake of fire with everlasting torment; so that v. Lencrerke is right when he remarks that this passage speaks of the fiery torments of the wicked after death, and thus that a state of retribution after death is indicated.
Ver. 12. In this verse it is in addition remarked, that the dominion of the other beasts was also destroyed, because the duration of their lives was determined for a time and an hour. The construction of the words forbids us (with Luther) to regard the first part of ver. 12 as dependent on *1 ly of ver. 11. The object WWn ")K£*i (the rest of the beasts) is presented in the form of an absolute nominative, whereby the statement of ver. 12 is separated from the preceding, ^l^n, impersonal, instead of the passive, as VJ in ch. ii. 35: " their dominion was made to perish," for "their dominion was destroyed." "The other beasts" are not those that remained of the seven horns of the fourth beast, which were not uprooted by the horn coming up amongst them, the remaining kingdoms of the fourth monarchy after the destruction by that horn, for with the death of the beast the whole fourth world-monarchy is destroyed; nor are they the other kingdoms yet remaining at the time of the overthrow of the fourth worldmonarchy or the destruction of the fourth beast (J. D. Mich., v. Leng.), which only lose their political power, but first of all would become subject to the new dominant people (Hitzig), for such other kingdoms have no existence in the prophetic view of Daniel, since the beasts represent world-kingdoms whose dominion stretches over the whole earth. The "remaining beasts" are much rather the first three beasts which arose out of the sea before the fourth, as is rightly acknowledged by Chr. B. Mich., Ros., overthrown by that which comes after it, yet the dominion of the one is transferred to the other; so in the prophetic representation the death or the disappearance of the first three beasts is not expressly remarked, but is here first indicated, without our needing for that reason to regard V^i'n as the pluperfect. For the exposition of this verse also we may not appeal to ch. ii., where all the four world-kingdoms are represented in one human image, and the stone which rolled against the feet of this image broke not only the feet, but with them the whole image to pieces (ch. ii. 34 f.), which in ver. 44 is explained as meaning that the kingdom of God will elude that those kingdoms had long before already perished at the hour appointed for them, but that a remainder C1?^) of them yet continued to exist (Hiiv.), for the representation in this chapter is different; and the rest of the beasts cannot possibly mean that which remained of the beasts after their destruction, but only the beasts that remained after the death of the fourth beast. The mas. suff. to jinpgpK* (their dominion) and jinp refer ad sensum to the possessor or ruler of the wTorld-kingdom represented by the beasts. With that interpretation of "the rest of »the beasts " the statement also of the second half of the verse does not agree, for it proves that the subject is the destruction of the dominion of all the beasts which arose up before the fourth. The length or duration of life is the time of the continuance of the world-kingdoms represented by the beasts, and thus the end of life is the destruction of the kingdom. The passive pret. rnw is not to be taken thus as the imperf.: ci a period of life was appointed to them," but as the pluperf.: " had been granted to them," and the passage formally connected by the simple 1 is to be taken as confirming the preceding statement. ¥W\ I?? (placed together as ch. ii. 21 in the meaning there explained) is not to be identified, with NJ^T, ver. 22 (v. Leng., Kran.). The form (stat. absol., not emphat.) shows that not a definite time, the time of the divine judgment of the fourth beast, is meant, but the time of the continuance of the powTer and dominion for each of the several beasts (kingdoms), foreseen only in the counsel of the Most High, and not further defined. In accordance with this, the statement of ver. 12 is that the first three beasts also had their dominion taken away one after another, each at its appointed time; for to each God gave its duration of life, extending to the season and time appointed by Him. Thus Kliefoth, with the older interpreters, correctly regards the connecting of the end of the first three beasts with that of the last as denoting that in the horn not merely the fourth kingdom, but also the first three kingdoms, the whole world-power, is brought to an end by the last judgment. This thought, right in itself, and distinctly announced in the destruction of the image (ch. ii.), appears, however, to lie less in the altogether loose connection of ver. 12 with ver. 11 than in the whole context, and certainly in this, that with the fourth beast in general the unfolding of the world-power in its diverse phases is exhausted, and with the judgment of this kingdom the kingdom of God is raised to everlasting supremacy.
Vers. 13. and 14. The giving of the kingdom to the Son of Man, — The judgment does not come to an end with the destruction of the world-power in its various embodiments. That is only its first act, which is immediately followed by the second, the erection of the kingdom of God by the Son of man. This act is introduced by the repetition of the formula, / saiv in the night-visions (vers. 7 and 2). (One) like a son of man came in the clouds of heaven. ^W By with the clouds, i.e. in connection with them, in or on them, as the case may be, surrounded by clouds; cf. Rev. i. 7, Mark xiii. 26, Matt. xxiv. 30, xxvi. 64. He who comes is not named, but is onty described according to his appearance like a son of man, i.e. resembling a man (5WN "12 as D^X \2 = B^S or DIN). That this was a man is not implied in these words, but only that he was like a man, and not like a beast or some other creature. Now, as the beasts signify not beasts but kingdoms, so that which appeared in the form of a man may signify something else than a human individuum. Following the example of Aben Ezra, Paulus, and Wegscheider, Hofmann (Schriftbeiv. ii. 1. 80, and 2, p. 582 f.), Hitzig, Weisse, Volkmar, Fries (Jahrbb. f. D. Theol. iv. p. 261), Baxmann, and Herzfeld (Gesch. des V. Jsr. ii. p. 381) interpret this appearance in the form of a man not of the Messiah, as the Jewish and Christian interpreters in general do, but of the people of Israel, and adduce in support of this view the fact that, in the explanation of the vision, ver. 27, cf. ver. 24, the kingdom, the dominion, and the power, which according to ver. 14 the son of man received, was given to the people of the saints of the Most High. But ver. 27 affords no valid support to this supposition, for the angel there gives forth his declaration regarding the everlasting kingdom of God, not in the form of an interpretation of Daniel's vision, as in the case of the four beasts in vers. 17 and 23, but he only says that, after the destruction of the horn and its dominion, the kingdom and the power will be given to the people of the saints, because he had before (ver. 26, cf. 22) spoken of the blasphemies of the horn against God, and of its war against the saints of the Most High. But the delivering of the kingdom to the people of God does not, according to the prophetic mode of contemplation, exclude the Messiah as its king, but much rather includes Him, inasmuch as Daniel, like the other prophets, knows nothing of a kingdom without a head, a Messianic kingdom without the King Messiah. But when Hofmann further remarks, that u somewhere it must be seen that by that appearance in the form of a man is meant not the holy congregation of Israel, but an individual, a fifth king, the Messiah," Auberlen and Kranichfeld have, with reference to this, shown that, according to ver. 21, the saints appear in their multiplicity engaged in war when the person who comes in the clouds becomes visible, and thus that the difference between the saints and that person is distinctly manifest. Hence it appears that the " coming with the clouds of heaven " can only be applied to the congregation of Israel, if we agree with Hofmann in the opinion that he who appeared was not carried by the clouds of heaven down to the earth, but from the earth up to heaven, in order that he might there receive the kingdom and the dominion. But this opinion is contradicted by all that the Scriptures teach regarding this matter. In this very chapter before us there is no expression or any intimation whatever that the judgment is held in heaven. No place is named. It is only said that judgment was held over the power of the fourth beast, which came to a head in the horn speaking blasphemies, and that the beast was slain and his body burned. If he who appears as a son of man with the clouds of heaven comes before the Ancient of days executing the judgment on the earth, it is manifest that he could only come from heaven to earth. If the reverse is to be understood, then it ought to have been so expressed, since the coming with the clouds of heaven in opposition to the rising up of the beasts out of the sea very distinctly indicates a coming down from heaven. The clouds are the veil or the " chariot " on which God comes from heaven to execute judgment against His enemies; cf. Ps. xviii. 10 f., xcvii. 2-4, civ. 3, Isa. xix. 1, Nab. i. 3. This passage forms the foundation for the declaration of Christ regarding His future coming, which is described after Dan. vii. 13 as a coming of the Son of man with, in, on the clouds of heaven; Matt. xxiv. 30, xxvi. 64; Mark xiii. 26; Rev. i. 7, xiv. 14. Against this, Hofmann, in behalf of his explanation, can only adduce 1 Thess. iv. 17, in total disregard of the preceding context, ver. 16.1
With all other interpreters, we must accordingly firmly maintain that he who appears with the clouds of heaven comes from heaven to earth and is a personal existence, and is brought before God, who judges the world, that he may receive dominion, majesty, and a kingdom. But in the words " as a man " it is not meant that he was only a man. He that comes with the clouds of heaven may, as Kranichfeld rightly observes, " be regarded, according to current representations, as the God of Israel coming on the clouds, while yet he who appears takes the outward form of a man." The comparison (3, as a man) proves accordingly much more, that this heavenly or divine being was in human form. This u Son of man " came near to the Ancient of days, as God appears in the vision of the judgment, ver. 9, and was placed before Him. The subiect to ^nilipn is undefined: Kran. thinks that it is the clouds just mentioned, others think it is the ministering angels. Analogous passages may be adduced in support of both views: for the first, the ve(pe\rj inrekafiev avrov in Acts i. 9; but the parallel passages with intransitive verbs speak more in favour of the impersonal translation, " they brought him" = he was brought. The words, " dominion, and glory, and a kingdom were given to him," remind us of the expression used of Nebuchadnezzar, ch. ii. 37 f., but they are elevated by the description following to the conception of the everlasting dominion of God. God gave to
1 The force of these considerations is also recognised by Hitzig. Since the people of the saints cannot come from heaven, he resorts to the expedient that the Son of man is a " figure for the concrete whole, the kingdom, the saints — this kingdom comes down from heaven." The difficulties of such an idea are very obvious. Fries appears to be of opinion, with Hofmann, that there is an ascension to heaven of the people of the saints; for to him " clear evidence" that the " Son of man" is the people of Israel lies especially in the words, " and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before Him," which necessitates the adoption of the opposite terminus a quo from Matt. xxiv. 30, Mark xiv. 62, Rev. i. 7; and hence makes the direct parallelism of Dan. vii. 13 with the passages named impossible (?).
Nebuchadnezzar, the founder and first bearer of the world-power, a kingdom, and might, and majesty, and dominion over all the inhabitants of the earth, men, and beasts, and birds, that he might govern all nations, and tribes, and tongues (ch. v. 18, 19), but not indeed in such a manner as that all nations and tribes should render him religious homage, nor was his dominion one of everlasting duration. These two things belong only to the kingdom of God. nps is used in biblical Chaldee only of the service and homage due to God; cf. ver. 27, ch. iii. 12, 14, 17 f., Ezra vii. 19, 24. Thus it indicates here also the religious service, the reverence which belong to God, though in the Targg. it corresponds with the Heb. ^V in all its meanings, colere JJeitm, terrain, laborare. Regarding the expression " nations, tribes, and tongues," see under vers. 3, 4. The eternity of the duration of the dominion is in this book the constant predicate of the kingdom of God and His Anointed, the Messiah; cf. ch. iii. 33, iv. 31, ii. 44. For further remarks regarding the Son of man, see at the close of this chapter.
Vers. 15-28. The interpretation of the vision. — Ver. 14 concludes the account of the contents of the vision, but not the vision itself. That continues to the end of the chapter. Ver. 15. The things which Daniel saw made a deep impression on his mind. His spirit was troubled within him; the sight filled him with terror. It was not the mystery of the images, nor the fact that all was not clear before his sight, that troubled and disquieted him; for ver. 28 shows that the disquietude did not subside when an angel explained the images he had seen. It was the things themselves as they passed in vision before him — the momentous events, the calamities which the people of God would have to endure till the time of the completion of the everlasting kingdom of God — which filled him with anxiety and terror. *nvi stands for the Hebr. ^'S?, and HJK sW?l is in apposition to the suffix in 'HVi, for the suffix is repeated with emphasis by the pronoun, ch. viii. 1, 15, Ezra vii. 21, and more frequently also in the Hebr.; cf. Winer, Chald. Gram. § 40, 4; Ges. Hebr. Gram. § 121, 3. The emphatic bringing forward of the person of the prophet corresponds to the significance of the vision, which made so deep an impression on him; cf. also ch. x. 1, 7, xii. 15. In this there is no trace of anxiety on the part of the speaker to make known that he is Daniel, as Hitzig supposes. The figure here used, " in the sheath" (E. V. " in the midst of my body"), by which the body is likened to a sheath for the soul, which as a sword in its sheath is concealed by it, is found also in Job xxvii. 8, and in the writings of the rabbis (cf. Buxt. Lex. talm. 5.i'.) It is used also by Pliny, vii. 52. On "visions of my head" cf. ver. 1.
Ver. 16. Daniel turned himself towards an angel who stood by, with a request for an explanation of these things. One of them that stood by refers to those mentioned in ver. 10, who stood around the throne of God; whence it is obvious that the vision is still continued. KV?K is not the preterite, I asked him, but the subjunctive, that (1) / might ask. So also "JSynin'; is to be taken with the 1 going before: he spake to me, that he informed me, namely by his speaking.
In vers 17-27 the angel gives the wished-for explanation. In vers. 17 and 18 he gives first a general interpretation of the vision. The words, these great beasts, of which there were four, form an absolute nominal clause: " as for the beasts;" as concerning their meaning, it is this: " they represent four kings." The kings are named as founders and representatives of world-kingdoms. Four kingdoms are meant, as ver. 23 shows, where the fourth beast is explained as WO, " dominion," u kingdom." Compare also ch. viii. 20 and 21, where in like manner kings are named and kingdoms are meant. From the future pD^. (shall arise) Hitzig concludes that the first kingdom was yet future, and therefore, that since Daniel had the vision under Belshazzar, the first king could only be Belshazzar, but could not represent the Chaldean monarchy. But if from the words shall arise it follows that the vision is only of kings who arise in the future, then, since Daniel saw the vision in the first year of Belshazzar, it cannot of course be Belshazzar who is represented by the first beast; and if Belshazzar was, as Hitzig thinks, the last king of Chaldea, then the entire Chaldean monarchy is excluded from the number of the four great beasts. Kranichfeld therefore understands this word as modal, and interprets it should arise. This was the divine decree by which also the duration of their kingdoms was determined (vers. 12, 25). But the modal interpretation does not agree with ver. 16, according to which the angel wishes to make known the meaning of the matter to Daniel, not to show what was determined in the divine counsel, but what God had revealed to him by the beasts rising up out of the sea. The future, shall arise, is rather (Kos., v. Leng., Maur., Klief., etc.) for the purpose of declaring that the vision represents the development of the world-power as a whole, as it would unfold itself in four successive phases; whereupon the angel so summarily interprets the vision to the prophet, that, dating from the time of their origin, he points out the first worldkingdom as arising along with the rest, notwithstanding that it had already come into existence, and only its last stages were then future. The thought of this summary interpretation is manifestly nothing else than this: " Four kingdoms shall arise on the earth, and shall again disappear; but the saints of God shall receive the kingdom which shall have an everlasting duration." |OT2*, receive; not found and establish by their own might, but receive through the Son of man, to whom God (ver. 14) has given it. pjvSv (cf. vers. 22, 25, 27) is the name of God, the Most High, analogous to the plur. forms DwN, DWp. " The saints of the Most High," or briefly " the saints" (vers. 21, 22), are neither the Jews, who are accustomed to call themselves u saints," in contrast with the heathen (v. Leng., Maur., Hitzig, etc.), nor the converted Israel of the millennium (Hofmann and other chiliasts), but, as we argue from Ex. xix. 6, Deut. vii. 6, the true members of the covenant nation, the New Testament Israel of God, i.e. the congregation of the New Covenant, consisting of Israel and the faithful of all nations; for the kingdom which God gives to the Son of man will, according to ver. 14, comprehend those that are redeemed from among all the nations of the earth. The idea of the everlasting duration of their kingdom is, by the words NJJ??V Q?V (for ever and ever), raised to the superlative degree.
The angel does not here give further explanations regarding the first three kingdoms. Since the second chapter treats of them, and the eighth also gives further description of the second and third, it is enough here to state that the first three beasts represent those kincrdoms that are mentioned in ch. ii. The form of the fourth beast, however, comprehends much more regarding the fourth world-kingdom than the dream-imao;e of Nebuchadnezzar did. Therefore Daniel asks the angel further for certain information (certainty) regarding the dreadful form of this beast, and consequently the principal outlines of the representation before given of it are repeated by him in vers. 19-21, and are completed by certain circumstances there omitted. Thus ver. 19 presents the addition, that the beast had, along with iron teeth, also claws of brass, with which it stamped to pieces what it could not devour; and ver. 20, that the little horn became greater than its fellows, made war against the people of God and overcame them, till the judgment brought its dominion to an end. K3*£ FWW, / wished for sure knowledge, i.e. to experience certainty regarding it.
In ver. 20, from *?SH {fell down) the relative connection of the passage is broken, and the direct description is continued. I?1 KJ"*.?] (and that horn) is an absolute idea, which is then explained by the Vav epexegetic. FTOn, the appearance which it presented, i.e. its aspect. ™"n:in |d (above his fellows), for WTOn vn jp (above the aspect of his fellows), see under ch. i. 10.
Ver. 21. P^i? (without the article), although used in a definite sense of the saints already mentioned, appertains to the elevated solemn style of speech, in which also in the Hebr. the article is frequently wanting in definite names; cf. Ewald's Lehrb. §277.
Ver. 22. As compared with vers. 13 and 14, this verse says nothing new regarding the judgment. For Ipp 3W K3*J is not to be rendered, as Hengstenberg thinks (Beitr. i. p. 274), by a reference to 1 Cor. vi. 2: "to the saints of the Most High the iudcrment is given," i.e. the function of the judge. This interpretation is opposed to the context, according to which it is God Himself who executes judgment, and by that judgment justice is done to the people of God, i.e. they are delivered from the unrighteous oppression of the beast, and receive the kingdom. NJ*! is justice procured by the judgment, corresponding to the Hebrew word BSBto, Deut. x. 18.
Ver. 23 ff. Daniel receives the following explanation regarding the fourth beast. It signifies a fourth kingdom, which would be different from all the preceding, and would eat up and destroy the whole earth. " The whole earth is the ohovfu.ivn,'" the expression, without any hyperbole, for the " whole circle of tho historical nations" (Kliefoth). The ten horns which the beast had signify ten kings who shall arise out of that kingdom, nnwta FBD« from it, the kingdom, i.e. from this very kingdom. Since the ten horns all exist at the same time together on the head of the beast, the ten kings that arise out of the fourth kingdom are to be regarded as contemporary. In this manner the division or dismemberment of this kingdom into ten principalities or kingdoms is symbolized. For the ten contemporaneous kings imply the existence at the same time of ten kingdoms. Hitzig's objections against this view are of no weight. That Wfi and ^0 are in this verse used as distinct from each other proves nothing, because in the whole vision king and kingdom are congruent ideas. But that the horn, ver. 8j unmistakcably denotes a person, is only so far right, as things are said of the horn which are in abstracto not suitable to a kingdom, but they can only be applicable to the bearer of royal power. But ch. viii. 20 and 21, to which Hitzig further refers, furnishes no foundation for his view, but on the contrary confutes it. For although in ch. viii. 21 the great horn of the goat is interpreted as the first king of Javan, yet the four horns springing up immediately (ver. 22) in the place of this one which was broken, are interpreted as four kingdoms (not kings), in distinct proof not only that in Daniel's vision king and kingdom are not " separate from each other," but also that the further assertion, that " horn " is less fitted than " head " to represent a kingdom, is untenable.
After those ten kingdoms another shall arise which shall be different from the previous ten, and shall overthrow three of them.?B$n\ in contrast with D\?K (cf. ch. ii. 21), signifies to overthrow, to deprive of the sovereignty. But the king coming after them can only overthrow three of the ten kingdoms when he himself has established and possesses a kingdom or empire of his own. According to this, the kino; arising after the ten is not an isolated ruler, but the monarch of a kingdom which has destroyed three of the kingdoms already in existence.
Ver. 25 refers to the same king, and says that he shall speak against the Most High. TO means, properly, against or at the side of j and is more expressive than?y. It denotes that he would use language by which he would set God aside, regard and give himself out as God; cf. 2 Thess. ii. 4. Making himself like God, he will destroy the saints of God. ^3, Pa., not " make unfortunate " (Hitzig), but consume, afflict, like the Hebr. nj3? 1 Chron. xvii. 9, and Targ. Jes. iii. 15. These passages show that the assertion that n?3? in the sense of to destroy, never takes after it the accusative of the person (Hitz.), is false. Finally, " he thinks to change times and laws." " To change times " belongs to the all-perfect power of God (cf. ch. ii. 21), the creator and ordainer of times (Gen. i. 14). There is no ground for supposing that HP! is to be specially understood of "festival or sacred times," since the word, like the corresponding Hebr. EHM, does not throughout signify merely "festival times;" cf. Gen. i. 14, xvii. 21, xviii. 14, etc. The annexed ATI does not point to arrangements of divine worship, but denotes " law " or " ordinance " in general, human as well as divine law; cf. ch, ii. 13, 15 with ch. vi. 6, 9. " Times and laws" are the foundations and main conditions, emanating from God, of the life and actions of men in the world. The sin of the king in placing himself with God, therefore, as Kliefoth rightly remarks, u consists in this, that in these ordinances he does not regard the fundamental conditions given by God, but so changes the laws of human life that he puts his own pleasure in the place of the divine arrangements." Thus shall he do with the ordinances of life, not only of God's people, but of all men. " But it is to be confessed that the people of God are most affected thereby, because they hold their ordinances of life most according to the divine plan; and therefore the otherwise general passage stands between two expressions affecting the conduct of the horn in its relation to the people of God."
This tyranny God's people will suffer " till, i.e. during, a time, (two) times, and half a time." By these specifications of time the duration of the last phase of the world-power is more definitely declared, as a period in its whole course measured by God; vers. 12 and 22. The plural word PWJ (times) standing between time and half a time can only designate the simple plural, i.e. two times used in the dual sense, since in the Chaldee the plural is often used to denote a pair where the dual is used in Hebrew; cf. Winer, Chald. Gr. § 55, 3. Three and a half times are the half of seven times (ch. iv. 13). The greater number of the older as well as of the more recent interpreters take time (PJV) as representing the space of a year, thus three and a half times as three and a half years; and they base this view partly on ch.iv. 13, where seven times must mean seven years, partly on ch. xii. 7, where the corresponding expression is found in Hebrew, partly on Rev. xiii. 5 and xi. 2, 3, where forty-two months and 1260 days are used interchangeably. But none of these passages supplies a proof that will stand the test. The supposition that in ch. iv. 13 the seven times represent seven years, neither is nor can be proved. As regards the time and times in ch. xii. 7, and the periods named in the passages of the Rev. referred to, it is very questionable whether the weeks and the days represent the ordinary weeks of the year and days of the week, and whether these periods of time are to be taken chronologically. Still less can any explanation as to this designation of time be derived from the 2300 days (evening-mornings) in ch. viii. 14, since the periods do not agree, nor do both passages treat of the same event. The choice of the chronologically indefinite expression pjy, time, shows that a chronological determination of the period is not in view, but that the designation of time is to be understood symbolically. We have thus to inquire after the symbolical meaning of the statement. This is not to be sought, with Hofmann ( Weiss, i. 289), in the supposition that as three and a half years are the half of a Sabbath-period, it is thus announced that Israel would be oppressed during half a Sabbath-period by Antichrist. For, apart from the unwarrantable identification of time with year, one does not perceive what Sabbath-periods and the oppression of the people of God have in common. This much is beyond doubt, that three and a half times are the half of seven times. The meaning of this half, however, is not to be derived, with Kranichfeld, from cli. iv. 13, where "seven times" is an expression used for a long continuance of divinely-ordained suffering. It is not hence to be supposed that the dividing of this period into two designates only a proportionally short time of severest oppression endured by the people of God at the hands of the heathen. For the humbling of the haughty ruler Nebuchadnezzar (ch. iv. 13) does not stand in any inner connection with the elevation of the world-power over the people of God, in such a way that we could explain the three and a half times of this passage after the seven times of ch. iv. 13. In general, the question may be asked, Whether the meaning of the three and a half times is to be derived merely from the symbolical signification of the number seven, or whether, with Lammert, we must not much rather go back, in order to ascertain the import of this measure of time, to the divine judgments under Elias, when the heavens were shut for three years and six months; Luke iv. 25 and Jas. v. 17. u As Ahab did more to provoke God to anger than all the kings who were before him, so this king, Dan. vii. 24, in a way altogether different from those who went before him, spake words against the Most High and persecuted His saints, etc." But should this reference also not be established, and the three and a half times be regarded as only the half of seven times, yet the seven does not here come into view as the time of God's works, so that it could be said the oppression of the people of God by the little horn will last (Kliefoth) only half as long as a work of God; but according to the symbolical interpretation of the seven times (see p. 152), the three and a half, as the period of the duration of the circumstances into which the people of God are brought by the world-power through the divine permission, indicate " a testing period, a period of judgment which will (Matt. xxiv. 22; Prov. x. 27), for the elect's sake, be interrupted and shortened (septenarius truncus)" Leyrer in Herz.'s Real. Enc.
xviii. 369. Besides, it is to be considered how this space of time is described, not as three and a half, but a time, two times, and half a time. Ebrard (Offenb. p. 49) well remarks regarding this, that " it appears as if his tyranny would extend itself always the longer and longer: first a time, then the doubled time, then the fourfold — this would be a seven times; but it does not go that length; suddenly it comes to an end in the midst of the seven times, so that instead of the fourfold time there is only half a time." " The proper analysis of the three and a half times," Kliefoth further remarks, u in that the periods first mount up by doubling them, and then suddenly decline, shows that the power of the horn and its oppression of the people of God would first quickly manifest itself, in order then to come to a sudden end by the interposition of the divine judgment (ver. 26)." For, a thing which is not here to be overlooked, the three and a half times present not the whole duration of the existence of the little horn, but, as the half of a week, only the latter half of its time, in which dominion over the saints of God is given to it (ver. 21), and at the expiry of which it falls before the judgment.- See under ch. xii. 7.
In vers. 26 and 27 this judgment is described (cf. ver. 10), but only as to its consequences for the world-power. The dominion of the horn in which the power of the fourth beast culminates is taken away and altogether annihilated. The destruction of the beast is here passed by, inasmuch as it is already mentioned in ver. 11; while, on the other hand, that which is said (ver. 12) about the taking away of its power and its dominion is strengthened by the inf. ftTgWiy? (to destroy), rniiTO (and to consume), being added to \F\yr\] (they shall take away), to which tyopw (his dominion) is to be repeated as the object. KErtD IV, to the end, i.e. not absolutely, but, as in ch. vi. 27, to the end of the days, i.e. for ever.
Ver. 27. After the destruction of the beast, the kingdom and the dominion, which hitherto comprehended the kingdom under the whole heaven, are given to the people of God, i.e. under the reign of the Son of man, as is to be supplied from ver. 14. As in ver. 26 nothing is further said of the fate of the horn, because all that was necessary regarding it had been already said (ver. 11), so also all that was to be said of the Son of man was already mentioned in vers. 13 and 14; and according to the representation of the Scripture, the kingdom of the people of the saints without the Son of man as king is not a conceivable idea, nppo *l (of the kingdom) is a subjective genitive, which is required by the idea of the intransitive Kfivn (the greatness) preceding it. The meaning is thus not u power over all kingdoms," but "the power ■which the kingdoms under the whole heaven had." With regard to ver. 27, cf. vers. 11 and 18.
In ver. 28 the end of the vision is stated, and the impression which it left on Daniel. Hitherto, to this point, was the end of the history; i.e. thus far the history, or, with this the matter is at an end. WJ?D, the matter, is not merely the interpretation of the angel, but the whole revelation, the vision together with its interpretation. Daniel was greatly moved by the event (cf. ch. v. 9), and kept it in his heart.
There yet remains for our consideration the question, What are the historical world-kingdoms which are represented by Nebuchadnezzar's image (ch. ii.), and by Daniel's vision of four beasts rising up out of the sea? Almost all interpreters understand that these two visions are to be interpreted in the same way. u The four kingdoms or dynasties, which were symbolized (ch. ii.) by the different parts of the human image, from the head to the feet, are the same as those which were symbolized by the four great beasts rising up out of the sea." This is the view not only of Bleek, who herein agrees with Auberlen, but also of Kranichfeld and Kliefoth, and all church interpreters. These four kingdoms, according to the interpretation commonly received in the church, are the Babylonian, the Medo-Persian, the Macedo-Grecian, and the Roman. " In this interpretation and opinion," Luther observes, " all the world are agreed, and history and fact abundantly establish it." This opinion prevailed till about the end of the last century, for the contrary opinion of individual earlier interpreters had found no favour.1 But from that time, when faith in the supernatural
1 This is true regarding the opinion of Ephrera Syrus and of Cosmas Indicopleustes, who held that the second kingdom was the Median, the third the Persian, and the fourth the kingdom of Alexander and his successors. This view has been adopted only by an anonymous writer in the Comment. Var. in Dan. in Mai's Collectio nov. Script. Vett. p. 176. The same thing may be said of the opinion of Polychronius and Grotius, that the second kingdom was the Medo-Persian, the third the monarchy of Alexander, and the fourth the kingdom of his followers — a view which has found only one weak advocate in J. Chr. Becmann in a dissert, dt Monarchia Quarta, Franc, ad Od. 1671.
origin and character of biblical prophecy was shaken by Deism and Rationalism, then as a consequence, with the rejection of the genuineness of the book of Daniel the reference of the fourth kingdom to the Roman world-monarchy was also denied. For the pseudo-Daniel of the times of the Maccabees could furnish no prophecy which could reach further than the time of Antiochus Epiphanes. If the reference of the fourth kingdom to the Roman empire was therefore a priori excluded, the four kingdoms must be so explained that the pretended prophecy should not extend further than to the time of Antiochus Epiphanes. For this end all probabilities were created, and yet nothing further was reached than that one critic confuted another. While Ewald and Bunsen advanced the opinion that the Assyrian kingdom is specially to be understood by the first kingdom, and that the Maccabean author of the book was first compelled by the reference to Nebuchadnezzar to separate, in opposition to history, the Median from the Persian kingdom, so as to preserve the number four, Hitzig, in agreement with von Redepenning, has sought to divide the Babylonian kingdom, and to refer the first kingdom to Nebuchadnezzar and the second to his successor Belshazzar; while Bertholdt, Jahn, and Rosenmiiller, with Grotius, have divided the kingdom of Alexander from the kingdom of his successors. But as both of these divisions appear to be altogether too arbitrary, Venema, Bleek, de Wette, Liicke, v. Leng., Maurer, Hitzig (ch. vii.), Hilgenfeld, and Kranichfeld have disjoined the Medo-Persian monarchy into two world-kingdoms, the Median and the Persian, and in this they are followed by Delitzsch. See Art. Daniel in Herz.'s Real. Eneyc.
When we examine these views more closely, the first named is confuted by what Ewald himself (Die Proph. iii. 314) has said on this point. The four world-kingdoms u must follow each other strictly in chronological order, the succeeding being always inferior, sterner, and more reckless than that which went before. They thus appear in the gigantic image (ch. ii.), which in its four parts, from head to feet, is formed of altogether different materials; in like manner in ch. vii. four different beasts successively appear on the scene, the one of which, according to ch. viii., always destroys the other. Now it cannot be said, indeed, in strict historical fact that the Chaldean kingdom first gave way to the Median, and this again to the Persian, but, as it is always said, the Persian and Median together under Cyrus overthrew the Chaldean and formed one kingdom. This is stated by the author himself in ch. viii., where the Medo-Persian kingdom is presented as one under the image of a two-horned ram. According to this, he should have reckoned from Nabucodrossor only three world -kingdoms, if he had not received the number of four world-kingdoms from an old prophet living under the Assyrian dominion, who understood by the four kingdoms the Assyrian, the Chaldean, the Medo-Persian, and the Grecian. Since now this number, it is self-evident to him, can neither be increased nor diminished, there remained nothing else for him than to separate the Median from the Persian kingdom at that point where he rendered directly prominent the order and the number four, while he at other times views them together." But what then made it necessary for this pseudo-prophet to interpret the golden head of Nebuchadnezzar, and to entangle himself thereby, in opposition not only to the history, but also to his own better judgment, ch. viii., if in the old sources used by him the Assyrian is to be understood as the first kingdom? To this manifest objection Ewald has given no answer, and has not shown that in ch. ii. and vii. the Median kingdom is separated from the Persian. Thus this hypothesis is destitute of every foundation, and the derivation of the number four for the world-kingdoms from a prophetic book of the Assyrian period is one of the groundless ideas with which Ewald thinks to enrich biblical literature.
Hitzig's opinion, that Daniel had derived the idea of separating the heathen power into four kingdoms following each other from the representation of the four ages of the world, has no better foundation. It was natural for him to represent Assyria as the first kingdom, yet as he wished not to refer to the past, but to the future, he could only begin with the kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar. Regarding himself as bound to the number four, he divided on that account, in ch. ii., the Chaldean dominion into two periods, and in ch. vii., for the same reason, the Medo-Persian into two kingdoms, the Median and the Persian. This view Hitzig founds partly on this, that in ch. ii. 38 not the Chaldean kingdom but Nebuchadnezzar is designated as the golden head, and that for Daniel there exist only two Chaldean kings; and partly on this, that the second wQ (ch. ii. 39) is named as inferior to the Chaldean, which could not be said of the Medo-Persian as compared with the Chaldean; and, finally, partly on this, that in the vision seen in the first year of Belshazzar (ch. vii.), Nebuchadnezzar already belonged to the past, while according to ver. 17 the first kingdom was yet future. But apart from the incorrectness of the assertion, that for the author of this book only two Chaldean kings.existed, it does not follow from the circumstance that Nebuchadnezzar is styled the golden head of the image, that he personally is meant as distinct from the Chaldean king that succeeded him; on the contrary, that Nebuchadnezzar comes to view only as the founder, and at that time the actual ruler, of the kingdom, is clear from ch. ii. 39, " after thee shall arise another kingdom " (^pD), not another king 0!r?)j as it ought to be read, according to Hitzig' s opinion. Belshazzar did not found another kingdom, or, as Hitzig says, another dominion (Herschaft), but he only continued the kingdom or dominion of Nebuchadnezzar. The two other reasons advanced have been already disposed of in the interpretation of ch. ii. 39 and of ch. vii. 17. The expression, a inferior to thee" (ch. ii. 39), would not relate to the Medo-Persian kingdom as compared with the Chaldean only if it referred to the geographical extension of the kingdom, which is not the case. And the argument deduced from the words " shall arise" in ch. vii. 17 proves too much, and therefore nothing. If in the word |*D*p* (shall arise) it be held that the first kingdom was yet to arise, then also the dominion of Belshazzar would be thereby excluded, which existed at the time of that vision. Moreover the supposition that rate means in ch. ii. 39 the government of an individual king, but in ch. ii. 4 a kingdom, the passages being parallel in their contents and in their form, and that P3?B in ch. vii. 17 ("the four beasts are four kings") means, when applied to the first two beasts, separate kings, and when applied to the two last, kingdoms, violates all the rules of hermeneutics. u Two rulers personally cannot possibly be placed in the same category with two kingdoms" (Kliefoth).
But the view of Bertholdt, that the third kingdom represents the monarchy of Alexander, and the fourth that of his BidSo-^oi (successors), is at the present day generally abandoned. And there is good reason that it should be so; for it is plain that the description of the iron nature of the fourth kingdom in ch. ii. breaking all things in pieces, as well as of the terribleness of the fourth beast in ch. vii., by no means agrees with the kingdoms of the successors of Alexander, which in point of might and greatness were far inferior to the monarchy of Alexander, as is indeed expressly stated in ch. xi. 4. Hitzig has, moreover, justly remarked, on the other hand, that " for the author of this book the kingdom of Alexander and that of his successors form together the |£ Aw?, ch. viii. 21 {the kingdom of Javan = Greci a). But if he had separated them, he could not have spoken of the kingdom of the successors as ' diverse ' in character from that of Alexander, ch. vii. 7, 19. Finally, by such a view a right interpretation of the four heads, ch. vii. 6, and the special meaning of the legs which were wholly of iron, ch. ii. 33, is lost."
Now, since the untenableness of. these three suppositions is obvious, there only remains the expedient to divide the Medo- Persian world-kingdom into a Median and a Persian kingdom, and to combine the former with the second and the latter with the third of Daniel's kingdoms. But this scheme also is broken to pieces by the twofold circumstance, (1) that, as Maurer himself acknowledges, history knows nothing whatever of a Median worldkingdom; and (2) that, as Kranichfeld is compelled to confess (p. 122 ff.), "it cannot be proved from Dan. v. 28, vi. 1, 29, ix. 1, xi. 1, that the author of the book, in the vision in ch. ii. or vii., or at all, conceived of an exclusively Median world-kingdom, and knew nothing of the Persian race as an inner component part of this kingdom." It is true the book of Daniel, according to ch. viii., recognises a distinction between a Median and a Persian dynasty (cf. ver. 3), but in other respects it recognises only one kingdom, which comprehends in its unity the Median and the Persian race. In harmony with this, the author speaks, at the time when the Median government over Babylon was actually in existence, only of one law of the kingdom for Medes and Persians (ch. vi. 9, 13, 16), i.e. one law which rested on a common agreement of the two nations bound together into one kingdom. "The author of this book, who at the time of Darius, king of the Medes, knew only of one kingdom common to both races," according to Kran., cl speaks also in the preceding period of the Chaldean independence of the Medes only in conjunction with the Persians (cf. ch. v. 28, viii. 20), and, after the analogy of the remark already made, not as of two separated kingdoms, but in the sense of one kingdom, comprehending in it, along with the Median race, also the Persians as another and an important component part. This finds its ratification during the independence of Babylon even in ch. viii. 20; for there the kings of the Medes and the Persians are represented by one beast, although at the same time two separate dynasties are in view. This actual fact of a national union into one kingdom very naturally and fully explains why, in the case of Cyrus, as well as in that of Darius, the national origin of the governors, emphatically set forth, was of interest for the author (cf.
ch. ix. 1, vi. 1, xi. 1, vi. 28), while with regard to the Chaldean kings there is no similar particular notice taken of their origin; and generally, instead of a statement of the personal descent of Darius and Cyrus, much rather only a direct mention of the particular people ruled by each — e.g. for these rulers the special designations 'king of the Persians,'" 'king of the Medes ' — was to be expected1 (cf. ch. viii. 20, x. 1, 13, 20, xi. 2)." Hence, as Kranichfeld further rightly judges, it could not (ch. viii.) appear appropriate to suppose that the author had Persia in view as the third kingdom, while in the visions ch. ii. and vii. we would regard Persia as a kingdom altogether separated from the Median kingdom. Moreover the author in ch. viii. speaks of the one horn of the ram as growing up after the other, in order thereby to indicate the growing up of the Persian dynasty after the Median, and consequently the two dynasties together in one and the same kingdom (ver. 3, cf. ver. 20). Yet, in spite of all these testimonies to the contrary, Daniel must in ch. ii. and vii. have had in view by the second world-kingdom the Median, and by the third the Persian, because at that time he did not think that in the relation of the Median and the Persian no other change in the future would happen than a simple change of dynasty, but because, at the time in which the Median kingdom stood in a threatening attitude toward the Chaldean (both in the second year of Nebuchadnezzar and in the first year of his son Belshazzar, i.e. Evilmerodach), he thought that a sovereign Persian kingdom would rise up victoriously opposite the Median rival of Nebuchadnezzar.
1 Kranichfeld goes on to say, that Hilgenfeld goes too far if he concludes from the attribute, the Mede (ch. vi. 1 [v. 31]), that the author wished to represent thereby a separate kingdom of the Medes in opposition to a kingdom of the Persians at a later time nationally distinct from it; further, that as in the sequel the Median dynasty of the Medo-Persian kingdom passed over into a Persian dynasty, and through the government of the Persian Cyrus the Persian race naturally came forth into the foregrouud and assumed a prominent place, the kingdom was designated a potiori as that of the Persians (ch. x. 1, 13, 20, xi. 2), like as, in other circumstances (Isa. xiii. 17; Jer. Ii. 11, 28), the Medians alone are a potiori represented as the destroyers of Babylon. "As there was?, during the flourishing period of the Median dynasty, a kingdom of the Medes and Persians (cf. Dan. v. 28, viii. 20), so there is, since the time of Cyrus the Persian, a king'dom of the Persians and Medes (cf. Esth. i. 3, 18, 1 Mace. i. 1, xiv. 2). Wc find in Daniel, at the time of the Median supremacy in the kingdom, the law of the Medes and Persians (Dan. vi. 9, 13, 16), and subsequently we naturally find the law of the Persians and Medes, Esth. i. 19."