NOTES ON DAN. 7 | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 18, 1875

NOTES ON DAN. 7.

Verse 5. This beast “raised up itself on one side;” for the Medes and Persians extended their conquests almost wholly to the west of their own countries; or “it raised up one dominion,” i. e., the Medes and Persians united to form one kingdom; or the Persians, who were the inferior people, acquired the chief dominion. The “three ribs” are interpreted of the three kingdoms of Babylon, Lydia, and Egypt, which the Persians conquered, and grievously oppressed; thus taking the prey, as it were, out of the mouth of the Chaldeans. Those standing by, who called on the beast to “arise and devour much flesh,” may be explained of the providential dispensations which excited the Medes and Persians to attempt extensive conquests; and of the cruelty of the Persian kings, which hardly ever was exceeded or equalled; but may it not also denote their attempts to subdue the Thracians, Macedonians, Greeks, and other European nations, which at length occasioned the ruin of their monarchy? “Their success made them still more greedy of dominion.”—Lowth. Scott. “Ancient historians stigmatize the Medes and Persians as the greatest robbers and spoilers that ever oppressed the nations.”—Paxt.

Verse 6. The swift leopard was used in hunting. “By the swiftness of Alexander’s progress, and the victories which he obtained by small forces, it appeared that Providence gave him the empire of the world.”—Lowth. Scott.

Verse 7. Some expositors have explained this fourth beast, of the successors of Alexander, and have endeavored to make out that Antiochus Epiphanes was “the little horn.” But were any of Alexander’s successors, or even all of them together, more powerful and dreadful than he had been? Were their conquests more extensive and destructive than his? For it is most evident that those of this fourth beast were. The “ten horns” were “kings,” or kingdoms (according to the language of prophecy), all existing at once, and not individual princes rising in succession. “The little horn” was not one of the ten, but arose among and after them.

These reasons have induced almost all modern Protestant expositors to look elsewhere for this “fourth beast;” and the emblems are so apposite that there can be little danger of mistake, or reason for hesitation, as to the grand outlines. This “fourth beast” evidently accords with the legs and feet of iron which were seen by Nebuchadnezzar in his visionary image and which were at length divided into ten toes. It far exceeded in power, fierceness, and destructive rage, all that had gone before it, as well as in the extent and long duration of its dominions; and no animal could be found so terrible and furious as to lend it a suitable name. This was doubtless an emblem of the Roman State, the invincible fortitude, hardness, and force, of which perhaps were never equalled.

This fourth empire was governed in another manner, and by other maxims, than any of the preceding, and in process of time, it was divided into ten kingdoms. These are indeed reckoned up in several ways, by different writers, according to the date assigned to the enumeration; but in general it is clear that the principal kingdoms in Europe at this day sprang from them, and comprise them, excepting some of the more northern regions, and those possessed by the Turks.

Faber’s remarks on this point are well worthy the accurate student’s attention, and his conclusion from it seems well grounded. The historian Machiavel, little thinking what he was doing, reckons up the ten primary kingdoms as follows: 1. The Ostrogoths in Mesia; 2. The Visigoths in Pannonia; 3. The Sueves and Alans in Gascoigne and Spain; 4. The Vandals in Africa; 5. The Franks in France; 6. The Burgundians in Burgunda; 7. The Heruli and Turingi in Italy; 8. The Saxons and Angles in Britain; 9. The Huns in Hungary, and 10. The Lombards, at first upon the Danube, afterward in Italy. The same catalogue is exhibited by that excellent chronologer, Bishop Lloyd, who adds the dates when these ten kingdoms arose: 1. The Huns, about A. D. 356; 2. The Ostrogoths 377; 3. The Visigoths, 378; 4. The Franks, 407; 5. The Vandals, 407; 6. The Sueves and Alans, 407; 7. The Burgundians, 407; 8. The Heruli and Rugii, 476; 9. The Saxons, 476; 10. The Longobards in the north of Germany, 483; in Hungary, 526.

“These, then, upon the concurring testimony of an historian and a chronologer, are ‘the ten kingdoms,’ into which the Roman Empire was originally divided; and consequently they are the first ‘ten horns’ of which we are in quest.”—Faber, vol. i. pp. 170, 171.

The Western Empire was at first divided into ten kingdoms; as the regions conquered by Alexander the Great were into four; and whatever alterations took place in subsequent ages, the one still continued, in the language of prophecy, the ten horns of the fourth beast, and the other, the four heads of the third beast. The Western Empire was broken into ten kingdoms; this, therefore, must be exclusively intended. And John, before he enters on the state of the church in the West, during the reign of the ten-horned beast and the two-horned beast, gives an account of the Eastern Empire, and the subdivision of it by the Saracens and Turks, in a distinct chapter. Rev. 9:11–13.

It is, however, certain, that the Roman Empire was divided into ten kingdoms; and though they might be sometimes more and sometimes fewer, yet they were still known by the name of the ten kingdoms of the Western Empire, which suffices for our general purpose. For though the Romans subdued those countries in the East which had successively belonged to the Chaldeans, the Persians, and the Macedonians, yet their empire (or the body, head, and horns of the beast) was in the West. All the four beasts are still alive, though the dominion of the first three has been taken away. The nations of Chaldea and Assyria are still the first beast; those of Macedonia, Greece, Thrace, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, are still the third; and those of Europe, on this side Greece, are still the fourth.—Sir Isaac Newton. Scott.

Verse 8. While the prophet was considering these ten horns, he saw “another little horn,” springing up among them. This evidently points out the power of the church and bishop of Rome, which from small beginnings, long before it became a temporal dominion, thrust itself up among the ten kingdoms and at length got possession of three of them, having turned out those who held them. “If ever three kingdoms were ‘plucked up’ before a little kingdom which arose imperceptibly among the ten primary kingdoms, they must be the three, the names of which occur in the preceding list of Machiavel, and Bishop Lloyd. Accordingly we find that the kingdom of the Heruli, the kingdom of the Ostrogoths, and the kingdom of the Lombards, were successively eradicated before the little papal horn, which at length became a temporal, no less than a spiritual, power, at the expense of these three depressed primary States.”—Faber.

This seems a better-founded opinion than that the Exarchate of Ravenna, the kingdom of the Lombards and the State of Rome (owned) the authority of the Roman Pontiff, of which two, the Exarchate of Ravenna and the State of Rome, were not among the ten primary kingdoms. In this horn, were “eyes like the eyes of a man.” This circumstance denoted the policy, sagacity, and watchfulness, by which the little horn would spy out occasions of extending and establishing its interests and advancing its exorbitant pretensions; and the court of Rome has ever been remarkable for this, above all states in the world, as every person at all acquainted with history must know. It had also “a mouth speaking great things;” and we shall have frequent occasion to speak of the arrogant claims, blasphemous titles, and great, swelling words of vanity, of this horn. The style of “his holiness,” “our Lord God, the Pope,” “another God on earth,” and the claims of infallibility, and of a power to dispense with God’s laws, to forgive sins, and to sell admission into Heaven, may serve for a specimen of the great things which this mouth has spoken.—Comprehensive Commentary.