Dan 11:33-35 | KD | STEP | משׂכּילי is not the teachers , but intelligentes , those who have insight or understanding. The pious are meant by the word, those who know their God ( ). This is seen from the contrast רשׁעים, Dan 12:10. According to the O.T. view, wisdom, insight, are correlative ideas with the fear of God, piety, ; ; and לרבּים with the article, the many, the great multitude of the people who bring themselves forward to view by the judicious appearance of the pious, are moved to hold fast by the law of the Lord. Yet they who understand shall for a time fall by the sword, etc. The subject to נכשׁלוּ is not the רבּים, or those with the teachers (Hitzig), but the עם משׂכּילי, but not all, but, according to , a number of them; for in falling is not first specially predicated of the teachers, as Hitzig thinks, but only the effect which that would have on the whole people. The words point to a warlike rising up of the faithful members of the covenant people against the hostile king, and have had their first historical fulfilment in the insurrection of the Maccabees against Antiochus Epiphanes; cf. 1 Macc. 2ff. In 1 Macc. 1:57; 2:38; 3:41; 5:13, 2 Macc. 6:11, there are examples of this falling by the sword. The רבּים after ימים in several Codd . is a worthless gloss.

‏ Daniel 11:33-35

Dan 11:33 משׂכּילי is not the teachers, but intelligentes, those who have insight or understanding. The pious are meant by the word, those who know their God (Dan 11:32). This is seen from the contrast רשׁעים, Dan 12:10. According to the O.T. view, wisdom, insight, are correlative ideas with the fear of God, piety, Psa 14:1; Job 28:28; and לרבּים with the article, the many, the great multitude of the people who bring themselves forward to view by the judicious appearance of the pious, are moved to hold fast by the law of the Lord. Yet they who understand shall for a time fall by the sword, etc. The subject to נכשׁלוּ is not the רבּים, or those with the teachers (Hitzig), but the עם משׂכּילי, but not all, but, according to Dan 11:35, a number of them; for in Dan 11:35 falling is not first specially predicated of the teachers, as Hitzig thinks, but only the effect which that would have on the whole people. The words point to a warlike rising up of the faithful members of the covenant people against the hostile king, and have had their first historical fulfilment in the insurrection of the Maccabees against Antiochus Epiphanes; cf. 1 Macc. 2ff. In 1 Macc. 1:57; 2:38; 3:41; 5:13, 2 Macc. 6:11, there are examples of this falling by the sword. The רבּים after ימים in several Codd. is a worthless gloss. Dan 11:34

Through the fall of the pious in war little help shall come to the people of God. מעט (little) is not “spoken contemptuously” (Hitzig), but the help is so named in comparison with the great deliverance which shall come to the people of God in the time of the end by the complete destruction of the oppressor. We may not therefore, with Hitzig and others, limit this expression to the circumstance that with the victories of Judas Maccabaeus (1 Macc. 3:11ff., 23ff., 4:14, etc.) they were far from gaining all, for they also met with a defeat (1 Macc. 5:60f.). For with the overthrow of Antiochus and the liberation of the Jews from the Syrian yoke, full help was not yet rendered to the people of God. The “little help” consists in this, that by the rising up and the wars of those that had understanding among the people the theocracy was preserved, the destruction of the service of Jehovah and of the church of God, which was aimed at by the hostile king, was prevented, and, as the following clauses express, the purifying of the people of God is brought about. This purifying is the design and the fruit of the oppression which God brings upon His people by means of the hostile king. The attaining of this end is a “little help” in comparison with the complete victory over the arch-enemy of the time of the end. Many shall connect themselves with the משׂכּילים (intelligentes, Dan 11:33) with flatteries (as Dan 11:21). “The successes of Judas, and the severity with which he and Mattathias treated the apostates (1 Macc. 2:44; 3:5, 8), had the result of causing many to join them only through hypocrisy (1 Macc. 7:6; 2 Macc. 14:6), who again forsook them as soon as opportunity offered; 1 Macc. 6:21ff., 9:23” (Hitzig, Kliefoth). Dan 11:35

Such has been the experience in all periods of the church’s history. Therefore does the church need to pass through the purifying process of affliction, in which not only the lukewarm fall away in the time of conflict, but also many even מן־המּשׂכּילים. מן is here partitive. יכּשׁלוּ (they shall fall) is to be understood (cf. Dan 11:33, בח נכשׁלוּ) not merely of death in battle, but of other calamities, such as being imprisoned, plundered, etc. בּהם לצרוף to melt, i.e., to purify by them, not as to them; for ב rof ;meht does not represent the accusative, as Kranichfeld thinks, referring in confirmation to Ewald, §282. The use of ב there spoken of is of a different nature. The suffix in בּהם refers neither to “those that understand” alone (Häv.), nor to the “many,” Dan 11:33 (v. Leng.), still less to the flatterers in Dan 11:34 (Maurer), but to all of these together, or to the whole company of the people of God in the sum of their individuals. The verbs וללבּן לברר serve to strengthen the expression (ללבּן for ללבּין on account of the assonance). קץ עד־עת (to the time of the end) is connected with יכּשׁלוּ, the chief idea of the passage. The stumbling and falling of “those who understand” (the pious) shall continue to the time of the end, to bring about the purification of the people for their glorification in the time of the end. For the end stretches itself out yet to the time appointed (cf. Dan 11:27); i.e., it does not come in with the “little help” which Israel received by the rising up of “those who understand” against the hostile king, thus not with the afflictions that came upon them by Antiochus, but it shall come afterwards at the time appointed by God. The assertion that “the end is connected with the death of king Antiochus Epiphanes” (Hitzig, Bleek, and others) is founded on a misunderstanding of the following section, Dan 11:36-45. On the contrary, Kranichfeld has rightly remarked, that “the statements made in Dan 11:36-39 incl. regarding the king of the north, now fall, in accordance with the context, into the period which shall expire at that time of the end are then to be prophesied.