Daniel Prophecy Reading

 

Daniel 11: The Rise and Fall of Nations – Part 1

 

 

God revealed the future to Nebuchadnezzar via a dream, that was interpreted by Daniel.  God also revealed the future to Daniel in chapter 7, opening before him what would take place in the future.  He sees beasts, but worse of all he see war being waged against the saints and the saints were being defeated (Dan. 7:21).  Daniel was deeply troubled, his face turns pale.

 

 

 

Daniel receives a vision in chapter 8; but instead of making matters clearer; it seems to make matters worse; for there is devastation; opposition and persecution.  Daniel was  exhausted and lays ill for several days.  He was appalled by the vision; it was beyond his understanding.

 

 

 

In chapter 9 Daniel prays to God; this prayer is answered in Daniel 10; but Daniel 10 – Ch 11.1 forms background and introduction to what is to follow.

 

...More Kings Will Appear in Persia...

 

Daniel 11:1-22 has been a difficult chapter for interpreters to understand.  There is a great amount of detail given, it is easy to become overwhelmed by it all and lose your way.  

 

 

 

Chapter 11 brings to view a historical details.  Chapter 11 ends with earths final battle. All these details serve to set the stage for the prophecies overall purpose, which is to carry the action down through the future until the time when Michael will appear on the scene on final time to bring the plan of salvation to a close and take His people home.

 

 

 

The prophecy of Daniel 11, like that of chapters 8 and 9, is concerned with the out working of the great plan of salvation and the eternal fate of God’s people.  It is closely linked to the prophecy of chapters 8 and 9 and amplifies that prophecy further as is shown by the following chart:

 

The Relationship of Daniel 11 to Daniel 8 and 9
Daniel 11	Daniel 8, 9
11:2 The Kingdom of Persia	8:20 The ram of Persia
11:2 The Kingdom of Greece	8:21 The Goat of Greece
11:3 A mighty King appears in Greece	8:21 The large horn as the first king of Greece  =Alexander the Great
11:4 The four winds = the scattering of the empire of the great king	8:22 The four kingdoms that rise out of the large horn of Greece
11:16 The Beautiful Land is conquered	8:9 Pagan Rome conquers the Beautiful Land of Israel
11:22 Prince of the covenant will be destroyed	9:25 Pagan Rome cuts off the Anointed One at Calvary

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Persian Kings of Daniel 11:2 Identified

 

Daniel 11:1, 2 refers to three Persian kings who were to “appear,” followed by a fourth king. 

 

1                                Cambyses 530–522 b.c.:      Since Cyrus was on the throne when Gabriel gave Daniel this prophecy, we should begin counting with his son Cambyses who assassinated his brother Smerdis. 

 

2                                Bardiyya 522 b.c.:   But while Cambyses was away, Bardiyya, an imposter, took the throne claiming to be Smerdis, (Gaumata, whose Babylonian name was Bardiya; see Vol. III, pp. 348, 349), a usurper.  Cambyses was on his way back from Egypt to rectify this situation when he died.

 

3                                Darius I Hystaspes 522–486 b.c.:     After a short time, Darius I Hystaspes took the throne following his military conquest of the rebels against the central government, including the false Smerdis. Darius was not in line for the throne, but he secured the position by means of his military conquests. 

 

The three Persian kings who would “appear” (11:2) were Cambyses, the false Smerdis, and Darius I Hystaspes.

 

 

 

4     Xerxes 486 – 465 B.C.: The fourth king who followed these three was especially significant: the prophecy says he “will be far richer that all the others.  When he has gained power by his wealth, he will stir up everyone against the kingdom of Greece” (11:2).  This wealthy king was Xerxes, the Persian king described in the book of Esther.  Xerxes, was the second of the Persian kings to stir up Greece by invading it; Darius had been the first.  Xerxes invaded Greece in 480B.C.  Greece did not retaliate for more than a century, but the Greeks never forgot the humiliation the Persians had inflicted upon their country. When they finally did, it was in direct response to what the Persians had done to them so many years before. 

 

The Greeks

 

The Greek retaliations took place under Alexander the Great.  The purpose of this prophecy is not to give a thorough survey of Persian history, but to trace it to the point at which the next power was introduced on the scene of action. 

 

                                                                                                                                                                        

 

Xerxes was the one who eventually brought the Greeks into the realm of Near Eastern politics; the prophecy then shifted to the new power on the scene of action in order to trace the rise and fall of these kings and their kingdoms.

 

 

 

Greece: Daniel 11:3, 4

 

1     Alexander the Great 336–323 b.c.: Daniel 11:3, 4.  The first king to rise after Greece came on the scene of action is described as a mighty king “who will rule with great power and do as he pleases” (vs. 3).  The text does not say so directly, but the clear implication is that this new powerful king obtained his power and kingdom from the defeat of the Persian kings before him.  This king was Alexander the Great.  Alexander’s dominion extended from Macedonia and Greece to northwestern India, from Egypt to the Jaxartes River east of the Caspian Sea—the largest empire the world had yet known (see ch. 2:39; 7:6). 

 

There is a direct Linguistic link between Daniel 8:8, 21 and Dan 11:4 in terms of Alexander’s fate; the same Hebrew verb is used in all three verses to express how he was to be “broken.”  Alexander had scarcely reached the pinnacle of his power when he was cut down. In 323 b.c. this king who ruled from the Adriatic to the Indus suddenly fell ill, and 11 days later was dead (see on ch. 7:6).

 

 

 

Daniel 11 adds the detail that his kingdom would not go to his direct posterity.  This was fulfilled in the life and death of Alexander the Great.  He had one young son at the time of his death, but his son did not inherit any part of his father’s empire. 

 

 

 

Alexander left no one in his immediate family who could be expected to hold together the territories he had won. Alexander’s posthumous son was called king, some of the leading generals tried, for a number of years, to hold the empire intact in the name of Alexander’s half brother and his posthumous son; but his son was killed while still a child, in the struggle between the generals over the actual rule of the empire. Consequently there was no descendant of Alexander who ruled.

 

 

 

In less than 25 years after Alexander’s death, a coalition of four generals had defeated Antigonus, the last aspirant to the control of the whole empire, and Alexander’s territory was divided into four kingdoms chs. 7:7; 8:22 (later reduced to three).

 

 

 

The kingdom was divided, “to the four winds of heaven,” or to the four directions of the compass.  This is the same language used in Daniel 8:8, referring to the breakup of Alexander’s empire into the four horns, or kingdoms, that his generals came to control. 

 

 

 

These divisions have already been discussed in chapters 7 and 8, where they are represented by the four heads and wings on the leopard (7:6) and by the four horns on the head of the goat (8:8, 22). 

 

Historical Kings of North and South, Daniel 11:5-15

 

From the stand point of the Jews living in Judah, the most important divisions of the Greek Empire were Syria, including the province of Babylon, which lay immediately to their north, and Egypt, which lay to their south.  These dynasties were known as the Ptolemies in Egypt and the Selucids in Syria, based on the names of their first rulers, Ptolemy I and Selucus  respectively.  During this period the Jews were first under the control of the Seleucids.  Finally, as a result of a war of independence, the Jews had their own kings, known as the Maccabean kings of the Hasmonean house. 

 

 

 

The history of the intertestamental period,[1] as described down to Daniel 11:13, can be outlined briefly as follows: Daniel 11.5: At the point in history referred to in this verse, the king of Egypt was Ptolemy I Soter (also called son of Lagus, 305–283 b.c.), one of Alexander’s best generals, who established the most enduring of all the Hellenistic monarchies. 

 

Seleucus I Nicator 05–281 b.c.), another of Alexander’s generals, made himself ruler of most of the Asiatic part of the empire, is referred to as “one of his [Ptolemy’s] princes” (Heb. śarim, “generals”; see on ch. 10:13) is probably to be understood in the light of his relations with Ptolemy. In 316 b.c., Seleucus was driven from Babylonia, which he had held since 321, by his rival Antigonus (see ch. 7:6). Seleucus placed himself under the command of Ptolemy, whom he assisted in defeating Demetrius, son of Antigonus, at Gaza in 312 b.c. Shortly after this, Seleucus succeeded in regaining his territories in Mesopotamia. 

 

Seleucus, who at one time could be considered one of Ptolemy’s “princes,” later became stronger than the Egyptian king. When Seleucus died in 281 b.c., his realm extended from the Hellespont to northern India. Arrian, the leading ancient historian for this period, states that Seleucus was “the greatest king of those who succeeded Alexander, and the most royal mind, and ruled over the greatest extent of territory, next to Alexander” (Anabasis of Alexander vii. 22).

 

 

 

“After some years,” Daniel 11:6: The prophetic view focuses next on a crisis about 35 years after the death of Seleucus I.  To establish peace between the two kingdoms after a long and costly war, Antiochus II Theos (261–246 b.c.), grandson of Seleucus I, married Berenice, a daughter of the Egyptian king, Ptolemy II Philadelphus. Antiochus also deposed his former wife and sister, Laodice, from her position of priority and debarred her children from succession to the throne.

 

 

 

King of the north: In the present context it refers to the Seleucids, whose territories were north of Palestine. The then “king of the north” was Seleucus II Callinicus (246–226 b.c.), son of Antiochus II and Laodice.  After a son had been born to the new marriage, a reconciliation was effected between Antiochus and Laodice. When Ptolemy died, however, this arrangement fell apart, and Laodice the former wife of Antiochus was able to engineer the deaths of Antiochus, Bernice, and Bernice’s son, (v. 6). 

 

 

 

Daniel 11.7: To avenge the death of Bernice and her son, “one from her family line” (v. 7), Ptolemy III Euergetes, came against the north and even captured its capital (v. 7).  For a time he controlled much of the territory of the king of the north and Syria, but he later relinquished it and returned to Egypt, carrying away from there much booty and even some of the Gods of the Syrians.

 

 

 

Daniel 11.8, 9:  This is simply an extension of human politics into the realm of the gods, for this indicated that the gods of Egypt had prevailed over the Gods of Syria (v. 8).  Ptolemy III returned to Egypt and did not attack the king of the north for some time.  Then Seleucus II attacked him in retaliation but was not successful (v. 9). 

 

 

 

Daniel 11.10:The sons of the kings of the north referred to at the beginning of v. 10 were Seleucus III Ceraunus and Antiochus III Magnus.  The former was a short reign king (226 B.C. – 223 B.C.), but the latter was a ruler of great importance hence the significance of the name Magnus “or Great.”  He reigned from 223 B.C. – 187 B.C. 

 

 

 

Daniel 11:11-13:  The reign of Antiochus III may be divided into unequal thirds.  The first third was demarcated by the disastrous battle of Raphia on the border between Egypt and Palestine where he was defeated by Ptolemy IV Philopater of Egypt (v.11).  From that defeat Antiochus III turned his attention to the east where he attempted to win back the possession of the Seleucid kingdom that had been lost.  In this he was largely successful.  Following that success, he turned again to the problem of Egypt and this time he had more success the in his first encounter (vs. 13).

 

 

 

At the battle of Panaeus, in 198 B.C., and as a result of the follow-up fromit, the province of Judea came into his hands.  Thus the territory of the Jews changed hands, and they were transferred from being vassals of the king of the south to being vassals of the king of the north.  Up to this point, the time of Antiochus III (verse 13) almost all commentators agree upon the identifications of the various kings of the north and south.  The question is:  What happened after the time of Antiochus III?

 

 

 

Antiochus IV Epiphanes, was responsible for introducing Rome onto the scene of action in the Middle East, he makes an appropriate transition point to Rome, just as Xerxes served as a transition point to Greece.

 

The Jews Persecuted and Almost Exterminated

 

Antiochus IV Epiphanes, 175 – 164/163 b.c.: his policy of Hellenization brought about a national crisis upon the Jews.  Antiochus tried to force the Jews to give up their national religion and culture, and to adopt in its place the religion, culture, and language of the Greeks; this is the most significant event in Jewish history during the entire intertestament period.

 

 

 

The threat posed by Antiochus Epiphanes confronted the Jews with a crisis. During his brief reign of 12 years Antiochus very nearly exterminated the religion and culture of the Jews. He stripped the sanctuary of all its treasures, plundered Jerusalem, left the city and its walls in ruins, slew thousands of Jews, and carried others into exile as slaves.

 

 

 

A royal edict commanded them to abandon all rites of their own religion and to live as heathen. They were forced to erect pagan altars in every Judean town, to offer swine’s flesh upon them, and to surrender every copy of their Scriptures to be torn up and burned. Antiochus offered swine before a pagan idol set up in the Jewish Temple. His suspension of the Jewish sacrifices (either 168–165 or 167–164 b.c., by two methods of reckoning the Seleucid Era; see Vol. V. p. 25n) endangered the survival of the Jewish religion and the identity of the Jews as a people.

 

 

 

Eventually the Jews rose in revolt and drove the forces of Antiochus from Judea. They even succeeded in repelling an army sent by Antiochus for the specific purpose of exterminating them as a nation. Free once more from his oppressive hand, they restored the Temple, set up a new altar, and again offered sacrifice (1 Macc. 4:36–54). Entering into an alliance with Rome a few years later (161 b.c.), the Jews enjoyed nearly a century of comparative independence and prosperity under Roman protection, until Judea became a Roman ethnarchy in 63 b.c. For a detailed account of the bitter experiences of the Jews during this evil time, see 1 Macc. 1 and 2; Josephus Antiquities xii. 6, 7; Wars i. 1.

 

 

These were trying times that were being foretold; times of persecution; times of trial.  Would God intervene and save His people or will the be ultimately defeated.  This is what the book of Daniel dir