Dan 8:3-9 | KD | STEP | This Part contains three revelations which Daniel received during the reigns of Belshazzar, Darius the Mede, and Cyrus the Persian, regarding the development of the kingdom of God. After describing in the First Part the development of the world-power and its relation to the people and kingdom of God from the days of Nebuchadnezzar, its founder, down to the time of its final destruction by the perfected kingdom of God, in this Second Part it is revealed to the prophet how the kingdom of God, in war against the power and enmity of the rulers of the world, and amid severe oppressions, is carried forward to final victory and is perfected. The first vision, Daniel 8, represents what will happen to the people of God during the developments of the second and third world-kingdoms. The second revelation, Daniel 9, gives to the prophet, in answer to his penitential prayer for the restoration of the ruined holy city and the desolated sanctuary, disclosures regarding the whole development of the kingdom of God, from the close of the Babylonish exile to the final accomplishment of God’s plan of salvation. In the last vision, in the third year of Cyrus, , he received yet further and more special revelations regarding the severe persecutions which await the people of God for their purification, in the nearer future under Antiochus Epiphanes, and in the time of the end under the last foe, the Antichrist. At Susa, in the province of Elam, Daniel saw in vision ( , ) a ram with two horns, which a he-goat coming from the west, running over the earth, having a great horn on his brow, smote and destroyed ( ). After that the goat waxed very mighty, till his great horn was broken; and in its place four notable horns grew up toward the four winds of heaven, and out of one of them there came forth a little horn, which directed its might toward the south and the east and toward the holy land, contended against the host of heaven, and magnified itself to the Prince of the heavenly host, took away the daily sacrifice, and desolated the place of the sanctuary ( ). He then hears from an angel how long this sacrilege shall continue ( , ). Another angel thereafter gives him an explanation ( ) of the vision; and with a remark ( ) regarding the effect of this revelation on the mind of Daniel, the chapter closes. This vision, it is manifest from the definition of the time in , stands in relation to the vision of the foregoing chapter, and in its contents is united to it also in so far as it gives more particular revelations regarding the relations of the second and third world-kingdoms, which are only briefly set forth in Daniel 7. But notwithstanding this point of union, this chapter does not form a mere appendix to the foregoing, but gives a new revelation regarding a phase in the development of the world-power and its enmity against the people of God of which nothing is prophesied in Daniel 7. The opinion that this chapter forms only an appendix to Daniel 7 is based on the erroneous idea that the fourth world-kingdom, the Macedonian, and the little horn in Daniel 7 are identical with that prophesied of in this chapter. , contain the historical introduction to this new revelation. This was given to Daniel in the third year of the reign of Belshazzar, and thus two years after the vision of the four world-kingdoms ( ), but not in a dream as that was, but while he was awake. The words, I, Daniel , are neither a pleonasm (Häv.) nor a sign that the writer wished specially to give himself out for Daniel (Ewald), but expressly denote that Daniel continues to speak of himself in the first person (Kliefoth). The article in הנראה ( that which appeared ) takes place of the relative אשׁר, and the expression is concise for נראה אשׁר החזון ( the vision which appeared ); cf. Ewald’s Lehr . §335 a . בּתּחלּה ( at the first ), as in , in the general signification earlier , and in ; ; , ; , synonymous with בּראשׁנה ( in the beginning ). Here the word points back to Daniel 7, and in it refers to of this chapter. “In vision,” i.e., ἐν πνεύματι, not ἐν σώματι, Daniel was placed in the city of Susa, in the province of Elam (Elymaïs). By the words, “I saw in vision; and it came to pass when I saw,” which precede the specification of the scene of the vision, is indicated the fact that he was in Susa only in vision, and the misconception is sufficiently guarded against that Daniel was actually there in the body. This is acknowledge by v. Leng., Hitzig, Maurer, Häv., Hgstb., Kran., and Kliefoth, against Bertholdt and Rosenmüller, who understand this, in connection with , as meaning that Daniel was personally present in Susa to execute the king’s business, from which Bertholdt frames the charge against the pseudo-Daniel, that he was not conscious that Elam under Nabonned did not belong to Babylon, and that the royal palace at Susa had as yet no existence. But this accusation has no historical foundation. We have no accurate information whether under Belshazzar Elam was added to Babylon or the Chaldean empire. It is true that not Hengstenberg ( Beitr. i. p. 42f.) only has, with older theologians, concluded from the prophecies of Jer 49:34., compared with and , that Nebuchadnezzar subjugated Susa, but Niebuhr also ( Gesch. Assurs , p. 211ff.) seeks from these and other passages of the O.T. to establish the view, that Nebuchadnezzar, after the death of Cyaxares (Uwakhshatra), to whom he owed allegiance, refused to do homage to his successor, and entered on a war against Media, which resulted in the annexation of Elam to his kingdom. But, on the contrary, Hävernick has well remarked, that the subjugation of Elam by Nebuchadnezzar can scarcely harmonize with the fact of the division of the Assyrian kingdom between the Babylonian king Nabopolassar and the Median king Cyaxares, whereby the former obtained the western and the latter the eastern half, and that from these passages of prophecy a subjugation of Elam by the Chaldeans cannot be concluded. Jeremiah announces neither in nor in Jer 49:34. a conquest of Elam by Nebuchadnezzar, but rather in Jer. 49 prophesies the complete destruction of Elam, or a divine judgment, in language which is much too strong and elevated for a mere making of it tributary and annexing it to a new state. Besides, this passage in no respect requires that Susa and Elam should be regarded as provinces of the Chaldean kingdom, since the opinion that Daniel was in Susa engaged in some public business for the Chaldean king is founded only on a false interpretation of , Dan 8:27. From the prophet’s having been placed in an ecstasy in the city of Susa, there follows nothing further than that this city was already at the time of the existing Chaldean kingdom a central-point of Elamitish or Persian power. And the more definite description of the situation of this city in the words, “which was in the province of Elam,” points decidedly to the time of Daniel, in which Susa as yet belonged to the province of Elam, while this province was made a satrapy, Susis, Susiana, now Chusistan, by the kings of Persia, and Susa became the capital of this province; therefore the capital Susa is not reckoned as situated in Elam by writers, who after this time distinguish between Susis (Susiana) and Elymaïs (Elam), as Strabo, xvi. 1. 17f., Pliny, hist. nat. vi. 27: Susianen ab Elymaide disterminat amnis Eulaeus . Still more groundless is the assertion, that the city of Susa was not in existence in the time of Daniel, or, as Duncker ( Gesch. der Alterth. ii. p. 913, 3 Auf.) affirms, that Darius first removed the residence or seat of the king to Susa with the intention that it should become the permanent residence for him and his successors, the central-point of his kingdom and of his government, and that Pliny and Aelian say decidedly that Darius built Susa, the king’s city of Persia, and that the inscriptions confirm this saying. For, to begin with the latter statement, an inscription found in the ruins of a palace at Susa, according to the deciphering of Mordtmann ( in der D. morgl. Ztschr . xvi. pp. 123ff.), which Duncker cites as confirming his statement, contains only these words: “Thus speaks Artaxerxes the great king, the son of Darius the son of Achämenides Vistaçpa: This building my great-great-grandfather Darius erected; afterwards it was improved by Artaxerxes my grandfather.” This inscription thus confirms only the fact of the building of a palace in Susa by Darius, but nothing further, from which it is impossible to conclude that Darius first founded the city, or built the first tower in it. Still less does such an idea lie in the words of Aelian, nat. animal . i. 59: “Darius was proud of the erection of a celebrated building which he had raised in Susa.” And Pliny also, taken strictly, speaks only of the elevation of Susa to the rank of capital of the kingdom by Darius, which does not exclude the opinion that Susa was before this already a considerable town, and had a royal castle, in which Cyrus may have resided during several months of the year (according to Xenophon, Cyrop. viii. 6. 22, Anab. iii. 5. 15; cf. Brissonius, de regio Pers. princ. p. 88f.). The founding of Susa, and of the old tower in Susa, reaches back into pre-historic times. According to Strabo, xv. 2. 3, Susa must have been built by Tithonos, the father of Memnon. With this the epithet Μεμνόνια Σοῦσα, which Herod. vii. 151, v. 54, 53, and Aelian, nat. anim . xiii. 18, gives to the town of Susa, stands in unison. For if this proves nothing more than that in Susa there was a tomb of Memnon (Häv.), yet would this sufficiently prove that the city or its citadel existed from ancient times - times so ancient that the mythic Memnon lived and was buried there. The city had its name שׁוּשׁן, Lily , from the lilies which grew in great abundance in that region (Athen. Deipnos . xii. p. 409; Stephan. Byz., etc.), and had, according to Strabo, xv. 3. 2, a circuit of 120 (twelve English miles), and according to others, 200 stadia. Its palace was called Memnoneion , and was strongly fortified. Here was “the golden seat;” here also were “the apartments of Darius, which were adorned with gold,” as Aeschylos says ( Pers . 3. 4. 159, 160), “the widely-famed palace,” - the περιβόητα βασιλεῖα, as Diod. Sic. xvii. 65, expresses himself. The ruins of Susa are not only a wilderness, inhabited by lions and hyaenas, on the eastern banks of the Shapur, between it and the Dizful, where three great mountains of ruins, from 80 to 100 feet high, raise themselves, showing the compass of the city, while eastward smaller heaps of ruins point out the remains of the city, which to this day bear the name Schusch ; cf. Herz.'s Realenc . xvi. p. 263f., and Duncker, Gesch. d. Alt . ii. p. 942ff. The designation of Elam as מדינה, a province , does not refer to a Chaldean province. עילם, in Greek ̓Ελυμαΐ́ς, formed the western part of the Persian satrapy of Susis or Susiana, which lay at the foot of the highlands of Iran, at the beginning of the valley of the Tigris and the Euphrates between Persia and Babylon, called by the Persians Uvaja , and by the Greeks Susis or Susiana after the capital, or Cissia after its inhabitants. It is bounded by the western border mountains of Persia and the Tigris, and on the south terminates in a arm, swampy and harbourless coast, which stretches from the mouth of the Tigris to that of the Aurvaiti (Oroatis). Strabo (xv. 732) says Susiana is inhabited by two races, the Cissaei and the Elymäi; Herodotus (iii. 91, v. 49, vii. 62), on the contrary, names only the Cissaei as the inhabitants of the country of the same name. The saying put into circulation by Josephus ( Antt. i. 6. 4, ̓́Ελαμος γὰρ ̓Ελαμαίους Περσῶν ὄντας ἀρχηγέτας κατέλιπεν), that the Elamites are the primitive race of the Persians, has no historical foundation. The deep valley of the Tigris and the Euphrates was the country of the Semites. “The names of the towns and rivers of the country confirm the statements of Genesis, which names Elam among the sons of Shem, although the erecting of the Persian royal residence in Elam, and the long continuance of the Persian rule, could not but exercise, as it did, an influence on the manners and arts of the Semitish inhabitants” (Duncker, p. 942). The further statement, that Daniel in vision was by the river Ulai , shows that Susa lay on the banks of the river. אוּלי is the Εὐλαῖος, Eulaeus , of the Greeks and Romans, of which Pliny says, “ circuit arcem Susorum ,” and which Arrian ( Exped. Alex . vii. 7) also mentions as a navigable river of Susis. On the contrary, Herodotus, i. 188, v. 49, 52, and Strabo, xv. 3, 4, place Susa on the river Choaspes . These contradictory statements are reconciled in the simplest manner by the supposition that Ulai, Eulaeus , was the Semitish, Choaspes the Aryan (Persian) name of the Kuran , which received the Shapur and Dizful. In favour of this, we have not only the circumstance that the name Choaspes is undoubtedly of Persian origin, while, on the other hand, אוּלי is a word of Semitic formation; but still more, that Herodotus knows nothing whatever of the Eulaeus , while Ptolemy (vi. 3. 2) does not mention the Choaspes , but, on the contrary, two sources of the Eulaeus , the one in Media, the other in Susiana; and that what Herod. i. 188, says of the Choaspes, that the kings of Persia drink its water only, and caused it to be carried far after them, is mentioned by Pliny of the Euläus, h. n. vi. 27, and in 31:3 of the Choaspes and Euläus. Daniel was in spirit conveyed to Susa, that here in the future royal citadel of the Persian kingdom he might witness the destruction of this world-power, as Ezekiel was removed to Jerusalem that he might there see the judgment of its destruction. The placing of the prophet also on the river of Ulai is significant, yet it is not to be explained, with Kranichfeld, from , , “where the kingdom in question stands in the same relation to the flowing river as the four kingdoms in do to the sea.” For the geographically defined river Ulai has nothing in common with the sea as a symbol of the nations of the world ( ). The Ulai is rather named as the place where afterwards the ram and the he-goat pushed against one another, and the shock followed, deciding the fate of the Persian kingdom. As, the, the scene of the vision stands in intimate relation to its contents, so also the time at which the revelation was made to Daniel. With the third year of Belshazzar the dynasty of Nebuchadnezzar, the founder of the Babylonian world-kingdom, was extinguished. In this year Belshazzar, the son and successor of Nebuchadnezzar, died, and the sovereignty was transferred to a collateral branch, and finally to an intruder, under whom that world-kingdom, once so powerful, in a few years fell to pieces. Shortly before the death of Belshazzar the end of the Babylonian monarchy was thus to be seen, and the point of time, not very remote, which must end the Exile with the fall of Babylon. This point of time was altogether fitted to reveal to the prophet in a vision what would happen after the overthrow of Babylon, and after the termination of the Exile.

‏ Daniel 8:3-9

Part Second - The Development of the Kingdom of God - Daniel 8-12

This Part contains three revelations which Daniel received during the reigns of Belshazzar, Darius the Mede, and Cyrus the Persian, regarding the development of the kingdom of God. After describing in the First Part the development of the world-power and its relation to the people and kingdom of God from the days of Nebuchadnezzar, its founder, down to the time of its final destruction by the perfected kingdom of God, in this Second Part it is revealed to the prophet how the kingdom of God, in war against the power and enmity of the rulers of the world, and amid severe oppressions, is carried forward to final victory and is perfected.

The first vision, Daniel 8, represents what will happen to the people of God during the developments of the second and third world-kingdoms. The second revelation, Daniel 9, gives to the prophet, in answer to his penitential prayer for the restoration of the ruined holy city and the desolated sanctuary, disclosures regarding the whole development of the kingdom of God, from the close of the Babylonish exile to the final accomplishment of God’s plan of salvation. In the last vision, in the third year of Cyrus, Daniel 10-12, he received yet further and more special revelations regarding the severe persecutions which await the people of God for their purification, in the nearer future under Antiochus Epiphanes, and in the time of the end under the last foe, the Antichrist.

At Susa, in the province of Elam, Daniel saw in vision (Dan 8:1, Dan 8:2) a ram with two horns, which a he-goat coming from the west, running over the earth, having a great horn on his brow, smote and destroyed (Dan 8:3-7). After that the goat waxed very mighty, till his great horn was broken; and in its place four notable horns grew up toward the four winds of heaven, and out of one of them there came forth a little horn, which directed its might toward the south and the east and toward the holy land, contended against the host of heaven, and magnified itself to the Prince of the heavenly host, took away the daily sacrifice, and desolated the place of the sanctuary (Dan 8:8-12). He then hears from an angel how long this sacrilege shall continue (Dan 8:13, Dan 8:14). Another angel thereafter gives him an explanation (Dan 8:15-26) of the vision; and with a remark (Dan 8:27) regarding the effect of this revelation on the mind of Daniel, the chapter closes.

This vision, it is manifest from the definition of the time in Dan 8:1, stands in relation to the vision of the foregoing chapter, and in its contents is united to it also in so far as it gives more particular revelations regarding the relations of the second and third world-kingdoms, which are only briefly set forth in Daniel 7. But notwithstanding this point of union, this chapter does not form a mere appendix to the foregoing, but gives a new revelation regarding a phase in the development of the world-power and its enmity against the people of God of which nothing is prophesied in Daniel 7. The opinion that this chapter forms only an appendix to Daniel 7 is based on the erroneous idea that the fourth world-kingdom, the Macedonian, and the little horn in Daniel 7 are identical with that prophesied of in this chapter. ^{▼▼According to the modern critics (Berth., v. Leng., Hitz., Bleek), this chapter must have been written shortly before the re-consecration of the temple, or immediately thereafter, before or immediately after the death of Antiochus Epiphanes. This supposition is drawn from Dan 8:14, according to which the period of oppression shall continue 2300 evening-mornings. But, overlooking the circumstance that these critics cannot agree as to the reckoning of this period of time, and thus announce the uncertainty of their hypothesis, the whole of the other contents of the chapter stand in contradiction to this supposition. It contains no hint whatever of the great victories of the Maccabees which preceded the consecration of the temple, and first made it possible, but, on the contrary, speaks of the oppression as continuing unchanged till the oppressor is himself destroyed (Dan 8:25), and then it breaks off without any Messianic view, as one should expect from a parenetic poem of a Maccabean Jews; so that Bleek finds himself compelled from his own resources to add “the intimation, that the beginning of the deliverance destined by God for His people is closely and immediately joined to the discontinuance of the worship of Jehovah by Antioch. Epiph., and to the destruction of this prince,” in order to give to the vision “a Messianic character.”}

Dan 8:1-7

The Vision

Dan 8:1, Dan 8:2 contain the historical introduction to this new revelation. This was given to Daniel in the third year of the reign of Belshazzar, and thus two years after the vision of the four world-kingdoms (Dan 7:1), but not in a dream as that was, but while he was awake. The words, I, Daniel, are neither a pleonasm (Häv.) nor a sign that the writer wished specially to give himself out for Daniel (Ewald), but expressly denote that Daniel continues to speak of himself in the first person (Kliefoth). The article in הנראה (that which appeared) takes place of the relative אשׁר, and the expression is concise for נראה אשׁר החזון (the vision which appeared); cf. Ewald’s Lehr. §335 a. בּתּחלּה (at the first), as in Dan 9:21, in the general signification earlier, and in Gen 13:3; Gen 41:21; Gen 43:18, Gen 43:20; Isa 1:26, synonymous with בּראשׁנה (in the beginning). Here the word points back to Daniel 7, and in Dan 9:21 it refers to Dan 8:16 of this chapter. “In vision,” i.e., ἐν πνεύματι, not ἐν σώματι, Daniel was placed in the city of Susa, in the province of Elam (Elymaïs). By the words, “I saw in vision; and it came to pass when I saw,” which precede the specification of the scene of the vision, is indicated the fact that he was in Susa only in vision, and the misconception is sufficiently guarded against that Daniel was actually there in the body. This is acknowledge by v. Leng., Hitzig, Maurer, Häv., Hgstb., Kran., and Kliefoth, against Bertholdt and Rosenmüller, who understand this, in connection with Dan 8:27, as meaning that Daniel was personally present in Susa to execute the king’s business, from which Bertholdt frames the charge against the pseudo-Daniel, that he was not conscious that Elam under Nabonned did not belong to Babylon, and that the royal palace at Susa had as yet no existence. But this accusation has no historical foundation. We have no accurate information whether under Belshazzar Elam was added to Babylon or the Chaldean empire. It is true that not Hengstenberg (Beitr. i. p. 42f.) only has, with older theologians, concluded from the prophecies of Jer 49:34., compared with Jer 25:25 and Eze 32:24, that Nebuchadnezzar subjugated Susa, but Niebuhr also (Gesch. Assurs, p. 211ff.) seeks from these and other passages of the O.T. to establish the view, that Nebuchadnezzar, after the death of Cyaxares (Uwakhshatra), to whom he owed allegiance, refused to do homage to his successor, and entered on a war against Media, which resulted in the annexation of Elam to his kingdom. But, on the contrary, Hävernick has well remarked, that the subjugation of Elam by Nebuchadnezzar can scarcely harmonize with the fact of the division of the Assyrian kingdom between the Babylonian king Nabopolassar and the Median king Cyaxares, whereby the former obtained the western and the latter the eastern half, and that from these passages of prophecy a subjugation of Elam by the Chaldeans cannot be concluded. Jeremiah announces neither in Jer 25:25 nor in Jer 49:34. a conquest of Elam by Nebuchadnezzar, but rather in Jer. 49 prophesies the complete destruction of Elam, or a divine judgment, in language which is much too strong and elevated for a mere making of it tributary and annexing it to a new state.

Besides, this passage in no respect requires that Susa and Elam should be regarded as provinces of the Chaldean kingdom, since the opinion that Daniel was in Susa engaged in some public business for the Chaldean king is founded only on a false interpretation of Dan 8:2, Dan 8:27. From the prophet’s having been placed in an ecstasy in the city of Susa, there follows nothing further than that this city was already at the time of the existing Chaldean kingdom a central-point of Elamitish or Persian power. And the more definite description of the situation of this city in the words, “which was in the province of Elam,” points decidedly to the time of Daniel, in which Susa as yet belonged to the province of Elam, while this province was made a satrapy, Susis, Susiana, now Chusistan, by the kings of Persia, and Susa became the capital of this province; therefore the capital Susa is not reckoned as situated in Elam by writers, who after this time distinguish between Susis (Susiana) and Elymaïs (Elam), as Strabo, xvi. 1. 17f., Pliny, hist. nat. vi. 27: Susianen ab Elymaide disterminat amnis Eulaeus.

Still more groundless is the assertion, that the city of Susa was not in existence in the time of Daniel, or, as Duncker (Gesch. der Alterth. ii. p. 913, 3 Auf.) affirms, that Darius first removed the residence or seat of the king to Susa with the intention that it should become the permanent residence for him and his successors, the central-point of his kingdom and of his government, and that Pliny and Aelian say decidedly that Darius built Susa, the king’s city of Persia, and that the inscriptions confirm this saying. For, to begin with the latter statement, an inscription found in the ruins of a palace at Susa, according to the deciphering of Mordtmann (in der D. morgl. Ztschr. xvi. pp. 123ff.), which Duncker cites as confirming his statement, contains only these words: “Thus speaks Artaxerxes the great king, the son of Darius the son of Achämenides Vistaçpa: This building my great-great-grandfather Darius erected; afterwards it was improved by Artaxerxes my grandfather.” This inscription thus confirms only the fact of the building of a palace in Susa by Darius, but nothing further, from which it is impossible to conclude that Darius first founded the city, or built the first tower in it. Still less does such an idea lie in the words of Aelian, nat. animal. i. 59: “Darius was proud of the erection of a celebrated building which he had raised in Susa.” And Pliny also, taken strictly, speaks only of the elevation of Susa to the rank of capital of the kingdom by Darius, which does not exclude the opinion that Susa was before this already a considerable town, and had a royal castle, in which Cyrus may have resided during several months of the year (according to Xenophon, Cyrop. viii. 6. 22, Anab. iii. 5. 15; cf. Brissonius, de regio Pers. princ. p. 88f.). ^{▼▼Pliny, hist. nat. vi. 27, says regarding Susiana, “In qua vetus regia Presarum Susa a Dario Hystaspis filio condita,” which may be understood as if he ascribed to Darius the founding of the city of Susa. But how little weight is to be given to this statement appears from the similar statement, hist. nat. vi. 14 (17): “Ecbatana caput Mediae Seleucus rex condidit,” which plainly contains an error, since Ecbatana, under the name of Achmeta, is mentioned (Ezr 6:2) in the time of Darius Hystaspes, in the tower of which the archives of the Persian kings were preserved.}

The founding of Susa, and of the old tower in Susa, reaches back into pre-historic times. According to Strabo, xv. 2. 3, Susa must have been built by Tithonos, the father of Memnon. With this the epithet Μεμνόνια Σοῦσα, which Herod. vii. 151, v. 54, 53, and Aelian, nat. anim. xiii. 18, gives to the town of Susa, stands in unison. For if this proves nothing more than that in Susa there was a tomb of Memnon (Häv.), yet would this sufficiently prove that the city or its citadel existed from ancient times - times so ancient that the mythic Memnon lived and was buried there.

The city had its name שׁוּשׁן, Lily, from the lilies which grew in great abundance in that region (Athen. Deipnos. xii. p. 409; Stephan. Byz., etc.), and had, according to Strabo, xv. 3. 2, a circuit of 120 (twelve English miles), and according to others, 200 stadia. Its palace was called Memnoneion, and was strongly fortified. Here was “the golden seat;” here also were “the apartments of Darius, which were adorned with gold,” as Aeschylos says (Pers. 3. 4. 159, 160), “the widely-famed palace,” - the περιβόητα βασιλεῖα, as Diod. Sic. xvii. 65, expresses himself.

The ruins of Susa are not only a wilderness, inhabited by lions and hyaenas, on the eastern banks of the Shapur, between it and the Dizful, where three great mountains of ruins, from 80 to 100 feet high, raise themselves, showing the compass of the city, while eastward smaller heaps of ruins point out the remains of the city, which to this day bear the name Schusch; cf. Herz.'s Realenc. xvi. p. 263f., and Duncker, Gesch. d. Alt. ii. p. 942ff.

The designation of Elam as מדינה, a province, does not refer to a Chaldean province. עילם, in Greek ̓Ελυμαΐ́ς, formed the western part of the Persian satrapy of Susis or Susiana, which lay at the foot of the highlands of Iran, at the beginning of the valley of the Tigris and the Euphrates between Persia and Babylon, called by the Persians Uvaja, and by the Greeks Susis or Susiana after the capital, or Cissia after its inhabitants. It is bounded by the western border mountains of Persia and the Tigris, and on the south terminates in a arm, swampy and harbourless coast, which stretches from the mouth of the Tigris to that of the Aurvaiti (Oroatis). Strabo (xv. 732) says Susiana is inhabited by two races, the Cissaei and the Elymäi; Herodotus (iii. 91, v. 49, vii. 62), on the contrary, names only the Cissaei as the inhabitants of the country of the same name. The saying put into circulation by Josephus (Antt. i. 6. 4, ̓́Ελαμος γὰρ ̓Ελαμαίους Περσῶν ὄντας ἀρχηγέτας κατέλιπεν), that the Elamites are the primitive race of the Persians, has no historical foundation. The deep valley of the Tigris and the Euphrates was the country of the Semites. “The names of the towns and rivers of the country confirm the statements of Genesis, which names Elam among the sons of Shem, although the erecting of the Persian royal residence in Elam, and the long continuance of the Persian rule, could not but exercise, as it did, an influence on the manners and arts of the Semitish inhabitants” (Duncker, p. 942).

The further statement, that Daniel in vision was by the river Ulai, shows that Susa lay on the banks of the river. אוּלי is the Εὐλαῖος, Eulaeus, of the Greeks and Romans, of which Pliny says, “circuit arcem Susorum,” and which Arrian (Exped. Alex. vii. 7) also mentions as a navigable river of Susis. On the contrary, Herodotus, i. 188, v. 49, 52, and Strabo, xv. 3, 4, place Susa on the river Choaspes. These contradictory statements are reconciled in the simplest manner by the supposition that Ulai, Eulaeus, was the Semitish, Choaspes the Aryan (Persian) name of the Kuran, which received the Shapur and Dizful. In favour of this, we have not only the circumstance that the name Choaspes is undoubtedly of Persian origin, while, on the other hand, אוּלי is a word of Semitic formation; but still more, that Herodotus knows nothing whatever of the Eulaeus, while Ptolemy (vi. 3. 2) does not mention the Choaspes, but, on the contrary, two sources of the Eulaeus, the one in Media, the other in Susiana; and that what Herod. i. 188, says of the Choaspes, that the kings of Persia drink its water only, and caused it to be carried far after them, is mentioned by Pliny of the Euläus, h. n. vi. 27, and in 31:3 of the Choaspes and Euläus. ^{▼▼There is little probability in the supposition that Choaspes is the modern Kerrah or Kerkha, the Euläus the modern Dizful, as Susa lay between these two rivers (Ker Porter, Winer, Ruetschi in Herz.'s Realen. xv. 246), and receives no sufficient support from the bas relief of Kojundshik discovered by Layard, which represents the siege of a town lying between two rivers, since the identification of this town with Susa is a mere conjecture.}

Daniel was in spirit conveyed to Susa, that here in the future royal citadel of the Persian kingdom he might witness the destruction of this world-power, as Ezekiel was removed to Jerusalem that he might there see the judgment of its destruction. The placing of the prophet also on the river of Ulai is significant, yet it is not to be explained, with Kranichfeld, from Dan 8:3, Dan 8:6, “where the kingdom in question stands in the same relation to the flowing river as the four kingdoms in Dan 7:2 do to the sea.” For the geographically defined river Ulai has nothing in common with the sea as a symbol of the nations of the world (Dan 7:2). The Ulai is rather named as the place where afterwards the ram and the he-goat pushed against one another, and the shock followed, deciding the fate of the Persian kingdom.

As, the, the scene of the vision stands in intimate relation to its contents, so also the time at which the revelation was made to Daniel. With the third year of Belshazzar the dynasty of Nebuchadnezzar, the founder of the Babylonian world-kingdom, was extinguished. In this year Belshazzar, the son and successor of Nebuchadnezzar, died, and the sovereignty was transferred to a collateral branch, and finally to an intruder, under whom that world-kingdom, once so powerful, in a few years fell to pieces. Shortly before the death of Belshazzar the end of the Babylonian monarchy was thus to be seen, and the point of time, not very remote, which must end the Exile with the fall of Babylon. This point of time was altogether fitted to reveal to the prophet in a vision what would happen after the overthrow of Babylon, and after the termination of the Exile. Dan 8:8 The transformation of the Javanic kingdom. - By the kingdom of the ram the he-goat became very great, powerful (הגדּיל as in Dan 8:4). But the great horn was broken at the height of his strength, and four similar horns grew up in its stead, toward the four regions of heaven. חזוּת is here used adverbially, conspicuously: there came forth conspicuously four in its place. This statement does not contradict Dan 8:22 and Dan 11:4, according to which the four kingdom shave not the power of the one great horn; for the thought is only this: they represent in themselves a considerable power, without, however, gaining the power of the one undivided kingdom. The breaking of the great horn indicates the breaking up of the monarchy of Alexander by his death. The four horns which grow up in the place of the one great horn are, according to Dan 8:22, four kingdoms. These are the dynasties of the Diadochs, of whom there were indeed five: Antigonus, Ptolemy, Cassander, and Lysimachus laid claim to the title of king; but for the first time after the overthrow of Antigonus at the battle of Ipsus, 301 b.c., and thus twenty-two years after the death of Alexander (323 b.c.), they became in reality four kings, and so divided the kingdom among themselves, that Lysimachus had Thrace and Bithynia, - Cassander, Macedonia and Greece, - Seleucus, Syria, Babylonia, and the Eastern countries as far as India, - and Ptolemy, Egypt, Palestine, and Arabia Petrea. But from the fact that this first happened after all the descendants of the royal family had been extirpated, we are not to conclude, with Hävernick, that the breaking of the great horn did not denote the death of Alexander, but the extinction of his race or house; a conclusion which derives no valid support from these words of Justin: “All of them abstained from the use of the insignia of this (royal) dignity while the sons of their king survived. So great was their veneration, that although they had royal wealth and resources, they cared not for the name of kings so long as there existed a legitimate heir to Alexander” (Hist. xv. 2. 13). If the breaking of the horn is placed at the point of time when the horn was powerful, here as well as at Dan 11:4, the reference of the words to the sudden death of Alexander in the prime of his days, and when in the very height of his victorious career, cannot be disputed; and by the breaking of the horn we can only understand Alexander’s death, and the breaking up of the kingdom founded by him, although it was still held together in a considerable degree for two decenniums by his generals, till the most imperious and the most powerful amongst them usurped the rank of kings, and then, after the conquest of Antigonus, a formal division of the kingdom into the four considerable kingdoms here named raised them to royal dignity.

The prophetic representation is not a prediction of historical details, but it gives only the fundamental traces of the development of the world-kingdoms, and that not in the form of a historiographical prophecy, but only so that it sketches the ground-thoughts of the divinely ordained unfolding of these world-kingdoms. This ideal fundamental thought of the prophecy has so wrought itself out in actual history, that from the one great kingdom, after the death of the founder, in the course of time four considerable kingdoms arise. The number four in the prophetic contemplation comes into view only according to its symbolical idea as the number of the world in its extension toward the four regions of heaven, so that thereby only the thought is declared, that a kingdom embracing the world will fall to ruins in a plurality of kingdoms toward all the regions of heaven (Kliefoth). This has been so historically realized, that out of the wars of the Diadochs for the supremacy four kingdoms arose toward the four regions of the earth into longer duration, - that of Cassander (Macedonia) toward the west, that of Seleucus (Babylonia, etc.) toward the east, that of Lysimachus (Thracia and Bithynia) toward the north, and finally that of Ptolemy (Egypt) toward the south. ^{▼▼When, on the other hand, Hitzig seeks to explain the prophetic representation, here as well as at Dan 11:4, that with or immediately after the death of Alexander his kingdom was divided, by reference to 1 Macc. 1:6, according to which Alexander himself, shortly before his death, divided the kingdom among his generals, he thereby not only misapprehends the ideal character of the prophecy, but does not in the least degree clear up the matter itself. For the passage in 1 Macc. 1:6, which not only Arabic and Persian authors repeat, but also Moses v. Chroene, and even later Greek and Latin historiographers, as Ammian Marcell., has been explained by Curtius (x. 10. 5) as a fama vana, and is proved by Wernsdorf (de Fide Librr. Macc. p. 40 f) and Droysen (das Test. Alex. 3te Beilage, zu Gesch. des Hellen. i.) to be without foundation (cf. Grimm, K. ex. Hdb. zu 1 Macc. 1:6). This may have been originally put into circulation by the partisans of the Hellenic kings, in order to legitimatize their sovereignty in the eyes of the people, as Grimm conjectures; yet the confirmation which the book of Daniel appears to give to it contributed to its wide diffusion by Oriental and Byzantine authors, and the author of the first book of the Maccabees had without doubt the book of Daniel before his eyes in the representation he gives.}The interpretation of the vision. Dan 8:9

Without following the development of the four horns further, the prophecy passes over to the little horn, which grew up out of one of the four horns, and gained great significance in relation to the history of the people of God. The masculine forms מהם and יצא (out of them came) are to be explained as a constructio ad sensum. אחת (one) after קרן (horn) is as little superfluous as is the מן in מצּעירה. אחת is a numeral, one horn, not several; מן is either comparative, less than little, i.e., very little (Ewald), or, as less than insignificance, wretchedness, i.e., in an altogether miserable way (Häv.). The one explanation is more forced than the other, and the idea of wretchedness is altogether untenable. Yet the מן serves as a circumlocution for the superlative = perpaucus (Gesen., Win., Aub.), while verbal analogies for it are wanting. מן signifies from, out of; but it is not to be united with קרן: one horn of smallness (v. Leng.), in which case מן would be superfluous, but with the verb יצא: it came up out of littleness, a parvo, i.e., a parvis initiis (Maur., Hofm., Kran., Klief.). Thus it corresponds with סלקת זעירה, Dan 7:8. In the words “it arose out of littleness” there lies the idea that it grew to great power from a small beginning; for it became very great, i.e., powerful, toward the south, toward the east, and toward the הצּבי (the splendour, glory), i.e., toward the glorious land. הצּבי = הצּבי ארץ, Dan 11:16, Dan 11:41. This designation of the land of Israel is framed after Jer 3:19 and Eze 20:6, Eze 20:15, where this land is called “a heritage of the greatest glory of nations” (a goodly heritage of the host of nations, E. V.), “a glory of all lands,” i.e., the most glorious land which a people can possess. The expression is synonymous with חמדּה ארץ (“pleasant land”), Jer 3:19; Zec 7:14; Psa 106:24. Canaan was so designate don account of its great fruitfulness as a land flowing with milk and honey; cf. Eze 20:6.

The one of the four horns from which the little horn grew up is the Syrian monarchy, and the horn growing up out of it is the king Antiochus Epiphanes, as Josephus (Ant. x. 11. 7) and all interpreters acknowledge, on the ground of 1 Macc. 1:10. The south, against which he became great, is Egypt (cf. Dan 11:5 and 1 Macc. 1:16ff.). The east is not Asia (Kranichfeld), but Babylon, and particularly Elymaïs and Armenia, 1 Macc. 1:31, 37; 3:31, 37; 6:1-4, according to which he subdued Elymaïs and overcame Artaxias, king of Armenia (App. Syr. c. 45, 46; Polyb. xxxi. 11). Besides the south and the east, Canaan, the holy land, as lying between, is named as the third land, as in Isa 19:23. it is named as third, between Egypt and Assyria; but הצּבי ואל (“and toward the glorious land”) is not, with Kranichfeld, to be regarded as an exegetical addition to המּזרח ואל (“and toward the east”). Palestine lay neither to the east of Daniel, nor geographically to the east of the kingdom denoted by the little horn, because the text gives no support to the identifying of this kingdom with the Javanic, the horn operating from the west.