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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Daniel 8:8 - 8:8
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The transformation of the Javanic kingdom. - By the kingdom of the ram the he-goat became very great, powerful (הִגְדִּיל 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. חָזוּת 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.
(Note: 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.)